Know Your Quarry
by The Sophisticated Shut In
Summary: AU. A teenaged Fry and Leela compete in their world's version of the Hunger Games. "She has to stop thinking like this. The Games begin in two weeks' time. She can't afford to think like this."
1. Chapter 1

**Title: Know Your Quarry**

**Story summary: An Alternate Universe fanfiction. Teenage Fry and Leela compete in a Futuramaverse version of the Hunger Games. **

**Ships: Fry / Leela, mentions of Amy/ Kif. **

**Warnings: Obviously this story contains violence. Rating should stay a T throughout, though, as this site doesn't seem to mind so much about violence and the sexual content in this one is very mild. **

**I've done my best to keep everyone as in-character as possible, although there will be some differences, owing to the situations I've put them in. **

**Knowledge of the Hunger Games trilogy will give you an advantage when reading, but you should be able to get by without it. I should probably also state that Nixon, in the Futuramaverse, is a natural fit for the role of President Snow. I'm working off the fictional, head-in-a-jar version though, and I don't own either of them, so please leave any defamation lawsuits at the door. I could only pay you in noodles and fanfiction anyway.  
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* * *

><p>Leela is four years old when Nixon wins the Earthican presidency. She doesn't pay much attention to it. It's politics, after all, and it's to do with the surface, a place Leela has never seen and is privately convinced doesn't exist.<p>

Besides, she's building a xylophone out of discarded tin cans, and at four years old that's really more important.

Dimly, she registers the fact that her parents talk about this man with frowny faces and hushed voices, as if they think maybe he can hear them even underground. Her father says Nixon is preying on the anti-immigrant prejudices of the electorate. Her mother says she doesn't like the way Nixon uses the media.

None of this means anything to Leela, so she quickly forgets all about it.

* * *

><p>When Leela is five years old, Nixon makes good on his election promise and constructs a giant "alien-proof" fence around the Earth. He electrifies the perimeter, so that illegal immigrants get fried trying to sneak in. The actual frying is broadcast live on television, on a specially-designated channel that broadcasts 24 hours a day.<p>

That same year, Leela's father begins to work longer hours in the sewer, for a smaller pay packet. He comes home late at night, caked in grime and so worn-out it's all he can do to flash Leela a smile.

Nixon is coming down hard on the mutant population, he says. He and Munda argue about it in strained whispers, when they think Leela is asleep. Munda always says the same thing – that mutants have rights – and Morris always reminds her that they don't. Only official Earthican citizens have rights, and Nixon has made it clear that when he says "official Earthican citizen" what he really means is "unadulterated human".

* * *

><p>Leela is six years old when the consequences of Nixon's anti-immigrant policy really begin to be felt by the surface. The healthcare and agriculture sectors are the first to buckle under the strain, but higher education suffers too, as colleges struggle to cope without fees from immigrant students. It quickly becomes clear that to Nixon and his cronies, every immigrant is an illegal immigrant, and none of them are going to be given Earthican citizenship. Ever.<p>

Desperate to distract an unhappy electorate, Nixon devises The Citizenship Games: a televised fight to the death. The rules are simple. The participants must volunteer. None can hold Earthican citizenship already, and all must be under the age of eighteen. They will fight each other in a specially-designed arena until only one remains. The Victor.

At first it seems like madness – what kind of kid would volunteer for that? And then it all becomes clear. It's the reward. The lone victor of the Games wins Earthican citizenship. Not just for a year – for a _lifetime_. And for their _entire immediate family_. The concept is wildly popular. Nixon's more xenophobic supporters relish the chance to watch a bunch of aliens fight to death, like the frightened animals they see them as. Moderates like the veneer of fairness the contest offers. They talk proudly of how generous the reward is, and skirt around the issue of the twenty or so dead kids the contest will produce every year. After all, they say, no-one's _forcing_ these kids to sign up. Detractors are mysteriously silenced.

Later that year, Nixon's stay in office is extended indefinitely. It's an emergency measure, he says, to counter the current "crisis". No-one points out that he is the one who caused the crisis in the first place.

No-one points out much of anything, anymore.

* * *

><p>A projector is sent to the sewers, so the whole of the mutant settlement can watch the Games every year.<p>

Every year, at least one mutant teen signs up.

Every year they die, without exception. Death after death after death. If their fellow contestants don't kill them, the deadly arenas do. Her parents try to stop her watching, but it doesn't make any difference. The Games hold a sick fascination for Leela. She watches every year as mutant kids are stabbed and strangled and beheaded by their fellow tributes, and as they are gassed or blown up or incinerated by traps in the arena. Some of them simply sicken or starve to death, and in a way those deaths are the worst. Those tributes hold on longest, and she can see it in their faces as their hope drains away. It seems so much crueler than a quick death. Watching those deaths unfold, down in the gloom of the sewer, all she wants to do is to reach through the screen and snuff out their lives herself. She thinks they'd probably thank her for it.

Surface people, she decides, are sick and bloodthirsty, and Nixon is the worst of all.

* * *

><p>The explosion happens on her tenth birthday.<p>

Leela is in the schoolhouse. Her mother is going to make her mushroom pancakes later, with five different types of fungi, and after that Raoul is coming round to play them some songs on his home-made guitar. (The xylophone taught her that she herself has no musical aptitude whatsoever, but Leela likes to hear other people play. And Raoul is actually pretty good.) She's wearing a lumpy knitted cardigan and a pair of spit-shined black leather shoes Munda insists are smart. They pinch her toes. It's funny how these stupid, insignificant little details stick in her head. Even years later Leela finds she can't think about the explosion without also remembering the itchy cardigan and the too-tight shoes, and the list she was making in her head of all her favorite songs.

She is too far away to hear the blast properly – it rumbles like far-off surface thunder – but she feels it. They all do. It shakes the floorboards under their feet, and the teacher doesn't even attempt to stop the class running out of the building. Every one of them has a family member working in the sewer system. A gas explosion or a pipe collapse means someone they know is injured at best, dead at worst.

Leela can't look at her classmates. Can't think about her stupid birthday anymore, or her too-tight shoes. All she can think about is her father. She runs all the way to the Eastern Pipeway. There is a stitch tearing at her side and her head is spinning, but she ignores it. Ignores it all. The Pipeway is the only thing that matters . . . until she reaches the familiar rusted entrance and finds it gone. In its place is a wreck of mangled iron. Raw sewage laps over her shiny black shoes, seeping through the gaps in the wreckage.

Munda is clutching at the foreman, begging for information about her husband. Leela hears their conversation as if from a distance. Most of it is muddled, but certain words stand out. _Crushed_ is one. _Drowned_ is another. And _sorry_, of course. _Sorry_, over and over again. Munda sinks to the ground all at once, like her insides have been sucked out.

Leela just gets foggy. For a long time she doesn't know where she is, can't hear anything except the blood rushing in her ears. Later they tell her she lost her mind. They say she screamed and threw things. They say she scratched and kicked and even bit anyone who tried to calm her down. Leela doesn't remember any of it, and she doesn't think it matters.

All that matters now is her mother, who no longer eats or sleeps, no longer really smiles, and never again seems truly whole.

* * *

><p>Her father is dead and buried under tons of surface filth, but the surface offers no compensation, and soon enough Leela and her mother begin to starve. Neighbors help them out, but there is never enough food to go around. Before long Leela can trace the outline of bones beneath her skin. Her stomach aches at night and if she stands up too fast she gets dizzy.<p>

Munda works two jobs, battling her grief, but it's not enough. At eleven years of age, Leela leaves school for good and becomes a sifter. Her job is to sift through muck on the first level of the sewer and retrieve anything of value. The pay stinks and after ten minutes Leela stinks too. It doesn't help that she has terrible depth perception. She lives in fear of missing something important and losing her job.

As it turns out, her fear is misplaced. The thing she should have been afraid of was illness.

It creeps up on her mother gradually, leaching the color from Munda's cheeks and slowing her movements, making her cough at night. She starts to lose weight again, like when they were both starving to death. Her forehead feels hot to the touch. Her breath rasps. One night she coughs and coughs until bright red blood spatters the sheets and Leela suddenly realizes: her mother isn't going to get better. Not without help.

It's an infection, the doctor says. A surface medicine called penicillin could cure her mother, but it can't be found in the sewer. Leela knows she could get down on her knees and personally beg President Nixon for it, but he wouldn't give it to her. No surface person would.

Her mother is going to die. Like her father, only worse, because this death won't come all at once. It will drag out over weeks, maybe even months, until Munda is too weak to move. She will end up like those children in the Games, any hope of survival draining away as her body collapses in on itself. And Leela will have to watch.

The day her mother can't get out of bed, she makes up her mind. It's a long shot, suicide to even attempt it if she's honest, but it's the only thing she can do. She's going to go to the surface, and steal the medicine her mother needs.

* * *

><p>She chooses her manhole with care, opting for one a long way from the city center. It's situated next to a big gray building she thinks might be a prison. There are letters picked out in wrought iron above the gate.<p>

_Cookieville Minimum Security Orphanarium,_ she reads. Huh.

She hides in the storm drain for hours, but waits until night falls to make her move. She has a hooded jacket, and there will be kids around. That means she might be able to blend in better than she'd hoped, and it means there might be a medical bay or a sickroom, for the kids. It might even contain more than just the bare minimum required to save her mother's life. A kind of excitement fizzes up in her as she bolts from the drain and flattens herself against the wall. Her heart is pounding in her throat.

Inside, the building is cold and featureless. There is a thick layer of dust and owl droppings on the floor, and what little furniture she can see is shabby and faded. It's not what she expected. This is the _surface_. It's supposed to be better, isn't it?

She can hear steel doors clanging in distant corridors. The sound spurs her on, gives her the courage to climb a staircase and check out a few empty rooms. She finds an office, a closet full of ancient brooms and mops, and a long bare room full of metal bedsteads. The room opposite is the one she wants. The sickroom. She slips inside - still drunk on her own daring - without pausing to listen at the door.

Her heart almost stops.

She's not alone.

The room is a shorter version of the one she just looked at. There are four metal-framed beds in it. Each is surrounded by a long, peach-striped curtain. Three of the curtains are pushed back, but one is half-drawn and in the foot-high gap between curtain and floor Leela can see a woman's severe pointed shoes.

She claps a hand to her mouth and immediately wraps herself in the folds of the neighboring curtain, trying her hardest not to breathe. If she is found here . . .

Amazingly, the woman doesn't notice her. She doesn't even seem to hear the door open and close. She's in the middle of a furious tirade against someone Leela can't see. Apparently the someone is mentally deficient and a drain on the state, and brought this injury on himself. At long last the boy she is talking to is given a chance to mumble his agreement and offer an apology. The woman waves it away and clacks off. She sweeps right past Leela without seeing her. This near-miss must lull Leela into complacency, because she lets herself take a breath at last – and almost jumps out of her skin.

"You can come out if you want," the boy says. "I know you're there. I can see your shoes."

His voice is a lot stronger now that the shouty matron woman is gone. He doesn't sound scared or angry. Just curious.

Leela swallows. Feeling like she has no real alternative, she steps forward and pulls back the curtain.

The first thing she feels is a wave of relief. Her discoverer is just a kid, like her. He can't be more than twelve. In fact, twelve is a generous estimate, because he looks pretty scrawny. He is small and pale, with dark blue eyes and shockingly bright orange hair. Leela has never seen hair that color, not even on a mutant. It's the color of carrots or toxic waste, and it sticks up in every direction. The boy is wearing a barf-green sweater over a peach-striped hospital nightshirt. One of his legs is encased in hard white stuff Leela has no name for. A winch is holding it up at a thirty degree angle, which explains why the boy didn't just get out of bed and investigate her presence himself. The impairment relaxes Leela a little. If she has to overpower him, it will be a lot easier like this.

She stands in front of the boy, waiting for him to react to the fact that there is a mutant at his bedside. If he makes any attempt to scream or attack her, she is ready to act. There is a lamp on his bedside locker she thinks she could brain him with.

But he only stares at her.

"What's with the eye?" he asks at last. "Are you an alien?"

Leela finds her voice.

"No."

The boy stares some more.

"It's a really big eye."

"I know."

"I mean, like . . . _really_ big."

"I was born with it," Leela snaps. "I'm a mutant."

"Oh," the boy says. Then - "I'm Fry."

"What?"

"That's my name," he explains. "Philip J Fry. But most people just call me Fry, because they use last names here. Like in a prison. Everything here is like a prison. There's even bars on the windows. What's your name?"

Leela blinks.

This doesn't make any sense. She just told him she's a mutant. He should be freaking out right now, and she should be making a run for it. But he isn't, and she isn't, and so she finds herself answering, in a kind of daze.

"Leela. Turanga Leela, but Turanga is a family name. Everyone calls me Leela."

"Snap!" Fry grins.

His smile is as shocking as his hair. It shines out like a fog lamp. It's bright and beaming, and Leela can't remember the last time someone smiled at her like that. Maybe her parents, when she was a baby and everything wasn't so exhausting. Maybe.

"I'm a mutant," she repeats, desperate to steer this conversation back on course.

It still doesn't have the desired effect.

"Are you an orphan too?" Fry asks, like this is somehow the more important question.

"No," Leela says, baffled. "My father is dead though. And my mother is dying."

Her voice sounds stiff and uncaring, even to her own ears. But she can't open those floodgates. She can't go back to that day at the Eastern Pipeway, to the flood of emotion that drove her crazy. It's safer to be factual about these things. That way, maybe they won't hurt as much.

But Fry's smile has dimmed at her words.

"I'm sorry," he says, sounding for some reason as if he actually _means_ it. "Can . . . can you do anything?"

Any minute now, Leela thinks, her eye is going to boggle right out of her head.

"She needs medicine," she hears herself say. "Penicillin. We don't have it in the sewer. I was going to steal it."

Fry nods, as if this is a perfectly reasonable plan. He points at a door Leela hadn't noticed yet. It's cut in two halves, like a stable door. The bottom half is locked, but the top is swinging free, and she could easily jump it.

"They keep all the medicine in there," Fry informs her. "In a big white box with a red t on it."

He's not lying. In under five minutes Leela has a bottle of red and yellow pills stashed in the pocket of her sweater. It rattles when she moves, and she keeps feeling like an alarm is about to go off, like sniffer dogs are about to chase her down. She needs to get out of here.

She wants to run, right now. But instead she finds herself hovering awkwardly at the foot of Fry's bed. She feels like she owes him something. Or something.

It's confusing.

"What happened to your leg?" she asks eventually. It seems only polite.

"Oh, I fell off the roof," Fry says. "I'm an idiot."

"What were you doing on the roof?"

"I went up there on a dare." He dips his head, looking momentarily miserable. "I just wanted the other kids to like me. They call me Stupid From The Stupid Ages, and Mega-Dunce. And Carrot-Top. Which isn't fair, because I can do tons of cool stuff."

"Like what?"

Why does she keep talking to him? Leela can't figure it out.

"I can finish a Rubik's cube," Fry boasts. "And I can do a septuple head spin, and I've seen every episode of Batman ever. That's cool, right? I'm cool!"

Leela shakes her head.

"I don't know what any of that means," she confesses. "But you seem nice. For a human," she adds quickly. "I don't know why they don't like you."

Fry smiles again. This one is different. It's smaller. Shyer.

"We could be friends," he says hopefully. "If you want. I could teach you how to do a septuple head spin, or a Rubik's cube, or, or . . . anything you want! And you could teach me what mutants do for fun. And come see me sometimes. I get . . . I get lonely, sometimes."

He fidgets nervously. When he touches her hand, Leela notes that his palm is hot and sticky.

"Please? I like you," he mumbles, and suddenly her face is hot too. She snatches her hand away.

"We can't be friends."

He calls after her - "Wait!", maybe or "Don't go!" - but Leela doesn't stop to listen.

She runs as fast as her legs will take her, and she doesn't look back.


	2. Chapter 2

She tells everyone she found the bottle of pills while sifting through the muck on Level One, and if they don't believe her, they can't imagine any alternative. Half the pills go to her mother and the other half go to the mutant medical center, to help somebody else. In recognition of her achievement, Leela is promoted from sifter to muck-raker. It's cleaner, and it builds the muscles in her upper-body, so she doesn't complain.

Her mother recovers, but is never as strong as she used to be. She is pale now, and she moves slowly, is more easily winded. She won't survive another illness. Not in the sewer. But it doesn't matter, because Leela has a plan.

One night she does the thing she has been putting off since she was ten years old, and goes through the trunk containing her father's belongings. She finds his fishing rods and convinces Mouth Mutant to take her out on the lake at weekends. It turns out to be something she's good at. Before long she can go out in his boat alone, hook any fish she wants and even harpoon squid. Twice a week she practices wrestling with her friend Moose, and every morning before work she runs laps around the village, pushing herself until her breath tears and her muscles scream.

Fighting. Survival skills. Stamina.

She is going to train as best she can, and when she turns sixteen, she is going to volunteer for the Games. She's going to volunteer, and she's going to _win_.

* * *

><p>Leela keeps her plan a secret, because she knows it would only worry her mother. Munda already worries about her too much. She asks why Leela doesn't have more friends, why she isn't interested in any of the boys in town, if she really <em>has<em> to push herself so hard to keep fit. The questions are easy enough to ignore. Everything is easy to ignore, except her mother. The tiny tickle of a cough, the smallest change in her coloring . . . Leela is attuned to anything that could signal oncoming illness. She can't lose her mother. She _won't_.

There is hardly room in her head for anything except her mother and her preparations for the Games. Friends are a distraction. Boys would be worse. Letting herself slip beneath peak physical fitness would be the biggest disaster of all. When Moose tries to ask her on a date one year, she laughs out loud. She tells him she admires his guts, but if he thinks she's the type to date he doesn't know her at all.

That same year Moose signs up for the Games. He's strong enough to survive the elements, and determined enough to kill. Leela didn't know he was planning to volunteer, but it makes sense, and for a while she actually thinks he could win.

Until the interviews. Until she sees Amy Wong.

Amy Wong is fourteen years old. She is small and plump, with short black hair and terrible acne, but none of that matters. Because Amy Wong is human. Her admittance in the Games causes uproar. Technically she qualifies – she doesn't hold Earthican citizenship, after all – but there has always been an implicit understanding about the Games. Humans don't enter. Only lesser species get put through the trauma of a televised bloodbath. So what the hell is Amy Wong doing onscreen?

Rumors fly, above and below ground. The Wongs were a prominent Martian family, said to hold more wealth than Nixon himself, but now Leo and Inez Wong are dead under mysterious circumstances, and their assets have been seized. People say they spoke out against Nixon, and were killed for it. People say Nixon was threatened by their wealth, and killed them for it. People say little Amy Wong was talked into volunteering for the Games by scary men in sunglasses. They say she's a lesson to the rest of them.

It makes sense to Leela. If the Wong girl dies in the arena, she becomes a warning to Nixon's opponents – _this is what happens if you speak up against the government_. If she lives, it will be because humans support their own. It will be a reminder to aliens (and mutants too, Leela supposes) that the odds are never in their favor. That the cards can always be stacked against them. The game can always be rigged.

It makes her sick to her stomach.

The interviews are a mixed bag. Moose does well. He plays up his brute strength (a smart move, because sponsors like to bet on a winner) and talks about how he could contribute to Earthican society if he won. He mentions pro-wrestling and logging in Alaska as his big dreams. He laughs with smarmy Zapp Brannigan about the quality of surface beer. He does well.

Amy Wong is up next. She seems small and scared, and no amount of styling can make her look anything other than dumpy onscreen. Brannigan doesn't even bother to leer at her. Amy spends most of the interview blinking at the cameras as though blinded. She talks about how she loves miniature golf and ponies. Apparently she won championships back on Mars. Her favorite food is strawberry choco-nut ice-cream, and her favorite color is pink. Or maybe yellow. She can't decide. When Brannigan asks her about her parents, she starts to cry.

Normally, Leela would take one look at this girl and write her off. _Normally_, any tribute who displayed this kind of weakness wouldn't last five minutes. But this is no normal tribute. When Amy spouts inanities, the human audience chuckle and "ahhh" like it's adorable. When she cries, they tear up immediately.

Amy might be a weakling, but it's pretty obvious she will want for nothing in the arena. She's going to have sponsors queuing around the block.

This prophesy is proved true once the Games begin. Food, water, matches, a flashlight . . . Amy only has to express half a longing for something and it becomes hers. Sponsors _adore _her. On one occasion someone even sends her strawberry choco-nut ice-cream.

But that's not the worst of it. The sponsors' generosity wouldn't have helped her if she'd been murdered at the Cornucopia the way Leela expected. But she wasn't, because Amy Wong is smart. Beneath her naive exterior is a frighteningly efficient mind. Amy knows she's easy prey for any tribute with an ounce of strength, so she avoids the bloodbath at the Cornucopia. She can afford to do so because she knows sponsors will send her whatever she needs to survive. Amy might look like a blob of pampered nothing, but she knows how to play the game.

Even worse, this year's arena might as well have been specially designed for her. It's an obstacle course, set out like a giant game of Mouse Trap. The tributes are snared by a succession of inventive booby traps - dropped cages, rolling boulders, swinging blades - but Amy manages to navigate them all. All those years of miniature golf, Leela guesses. The arena itself takes care of most of her competition, until Amy only has to defeat Moose and three Careers to win. She hides behind a rock pile and for a while it looks as if her plan is simply to wait until the alliance fractures, and hope her enemies pick each other off.

It isn't.

Instead Amy Wong writes HARPOON in the dirt. It arrives at night, and from there it's game over. Sweet little Amy Wong wanders up to the Career on guard, the harpoon hidden behind her back. Her knees are knocking, and the alien must not recognize her as a threat, because before it has time to react Amy has sliced its throat open. Blue plasma gushes out over the ground. The alien is dead before it can issue a warning. From then on it's easy. Amy simply wanders up to the remaining three kids, who are asleep on the ground. The point of the harpoon sweeps across their throats. They convulse wildly. Moose even wakes, his eyes wide and fearful, but there's nothing he can do to save himself, and there's nothing Amy Wong will do to save him. She just crouches by him, watching his life drain away with terrified, too-bright eyes.

The sound of the cannon bleeds into the sound of fanfare, and when Amy stands up, she does so as the victor of the eighth annual Citizenship Games.

* * *

><p>In two years time, Leela will be in Amy's place.<p>

It's the promise she made herself – the promise she made her mother, in the privacy of her own head – and she won't betray it now. No matter how horrible the Games get. No matter how scared she is. Nothing scares her more than the thought of losing her mother, and if they stay in the sewer, she _will_ lose her. This is what Leela tells herself, whenever her resolve starts to falter.

During the day, she doesn't need to tell herself anything. She can work and train and stay focused on her goals without fear.

But at night . . .

She's started to dream. It's hard to say when it begins, exactly, but soon enough she wakes in a sweat every night, her heart racing.

She dreams of her father, crushed and drowning. He dies over and over again in her dreams, and so does her mother. Munda wastes away, gets sicker and sicker, until she takes one final death-rattle gasp and she's gone.

She dreams about the tributes from eight consecutive Games, and the ways in which they died. She sees Moose over and over again, trying to scream through the ragged wound in his throat. She sees the way she laughed when he tried to ask her on that date, and the hurt she pretended she couldn't see when it flashed across his face.

Sometimes though, among all the dying, she dreams of something else. She doesn't know why. Maybe it's because he tried to help her, or maybe it's because he really sounded sorry when she told him about her mother. Maybe it's because he is the only proof she has that good actually exists in the world, and that idea haunts her more than all the horror.

Because sometimes she dreams about Philip J Fry. Sometimes she can feel the warmth of his hand again, and the heat of her cheeks when he smiled at her, and sometimes she wonders what would have happened if he hadn't been stuck in that bed when she ran away. Maybe he would have run after her.

But then she stops herself, because no matter what happens, she can't afford to think like that.

* * *

><p>She submits her entry form on the eve of her sixteenth birthday.<p>

It doesn't seem real.

Leela lies awake that night, staring at her bedroom ceiling until it starts to blur. Eventually she thrusts her head under the pillow and lets the nightmares take her. Moose and her father and her dying mother haunt her dreams, and the next day, she feels as if she is sleepwalking through her own celebrations.

* * *

><p>The Peacekeepers come for her a week after that. Their gleaming white uniforms stand out starkly against the filth of the sewer. From a distance, with helmets throwing dark shadows across their faces, they look like ghosts. But when they surround Leela to escort her to her one and only goodbye, they grip her with fingers like iron.<p>

Munda is first confused, then horrified when she understands what is happening.

"No!" she screams. "Leela, baby, no! Why would you do this?"

"For us. For you, Mom."

"No." Munda looks like she is in physical pain. "You can't! You withdraw your name right now! That's an order!"

Leela feels something twist inside her. It's sharp and it hurts.

"I can't," she says softly. "The contract is binding the moment you sign the application. I agreed to do this, Mom. I can't back out now."

"Time's up."

A Peacekeeper shoves her in the back. Leela sees distress flash across her mother's face, but Munda is either too smart or too scared to speak up.

"My baby," is all she says, in a tiny, broken voice.

"Mom!" Leela gasps. The Peacekeepers start to drag her away. "No, wait! I need more time! Mom!"

The harder she struggles, the tighter they grip her. It wasn't supposed to be like this, she thinks desperately. She was supposed to be cool and calm. She was supposed to make her mother see what a good idea this is, how it's the only real option. How none of it matters anyway, because she's going to _win_.

Instead she fights back tears as Nixon's goons haul her off.

"Mom! Mom, I love you!" she screams. "I'm coming back! Mom!"

Hot tears course down her cheeks, and the door slams in her face.

* * *

><p>Leela dries her face as soon as they leave the sewer. She doesn't want to look weak in front of any other tributes – or worse, sponsors.<p>

The Peacekeepers deposit her in the cargo bay of a sleek black hovercraft. The Gamemakers must intend to collect all the tributes at once, because there are 24 seats inside, and three of them are already occupied. Leela slides into the fourth and buckles her seat belt.

The craft takes off again.

For twenty minutes they fly in uninterrupted silence. The only sound is the rattling of the chassis and the whir of the propellers. Leela and her companions don't talk, but she sizes them up as best she can anyway.

The first, a hulking pink amoeba thing, is probably female. The surface of her flesh ripples aggressively, and she glares at anyone who makes eye contact. A Career, Leela decides, or a would-be Career.

The second is a tall gray Native Martian. He has spindly limbs and his bare chest is patterned with livid white scars. His gaze is fixed on a point somewhere above Leela's head. It never wavers. The message he is sending is all too clear – his fellow tributes are too far below him to merit his notice. Leela marks him as a threat.

The third tribute is no threat at all. He is a stocky, mud-green Omicronian about a foot shorter than Leela, who is sniffling pathetically into his cloak. Whatever drove him to volunteer, he obviously regrets it now.

A horrible, gelatinous green blob gets picked up next. He waves his six feelers in a threatening way, and grins nastily. Definitely a Career. Leela knows a bully when she sees one.

The blob is followed by a reeking Decapodian boy with holes in his shoes, then an Amphibiosan girl who has a slight, unthreatening build, but a narrow, cunning face that hints at hidden strengths. Leela disregards the boy and makes a mental note about the girl. She could be one to watch out for.

They touch down again, the door opens, and the Peacekeepers shove in a skinny, humanoid boy. He is wearing a shabby green coat that must be at least third-hand, and an oversized woolen hat. When the Peacekeepers push him inside he stumbles, and they kick him in the small of the back. He barely reacts. Obviously this kid is used to life kicking him while he's down.

Leela wonders what species he is. From here he looks as human as she does. When he sits down next to the sobbing Omicronian she leans forward, trying to get a better look.

She sees a pale face. Blue eyes. An overbite. It all looks a little bit familiar, though she can't think why. The boy buckles his seat belt at last and settles back, tugging off his hat with one hand.

Underneath it his hair is brilliant orange.

He isn't humanoid, Leela realizes. He's _human_. He's _her_ human. The only one she's ever known, the only one she ever thought she might like, if she wasn't so scared. Philip J Fry, from the orphanarium. His voice echoes in her head. _"We could be friends." _

_Friends_.

She wanted to be, once.

But now he's here, in the Games. A _human_. Leela doesn't know if she should scream or cry. A human in the Games is a death warrant for every other tribute. His strengths and weaknesses don't matter. The odds will be skewed in his favor. Sponsors, the audience . . . even the Gamemakers themselves will want him to win. Whatever chance Leela thought she had, she just lost it.

She looks at Philip J Fry's pale, nervous face, and wishes she could reach across the hovercraft to spit in it.

The atmosphere in the craft has grown thick, as the other tributes come to the same realization as Leela. The only person in the craft who doesn't seem to wish death on Fry is the little Omicronian beside him, who probably couldn't cry any harder anyway.

Leela has given up hope of him ever shutting up, but to her amazement he does - when Fry sticks out a hand and says brightly: "Hi. I'm Fry. What's your name?"

There is a moment of confusion, where the kid just stares at Fry all wobbly-eyed. Then he gives a tremendous sniff and actually stops crying.

"I'm Jrr," he mumbles. "Of the planet Omicron Persei 8."

Fry nods.

"Cool," he says.

His voice has broken since Leela last saw him, but it's still not what anyone would call manly. Nor is he, if she's honest. He still looks scrawny and underfed – more so than Leela herself, or most of the kids she knows in the sewer. The orphanarium can't have been good to him. His strange, instinctive kindness seems to have survived it though.

"You seem sad," he tells Jrr. "Wanna talk about it?"

Jrr wipes his nose on his cape.

"I don't want to be in the Games," he whispers. "I only volunteered to make my parents mad. My dad hates humans. We had a big fight and I said I was going to run away to Earth and never see him again. I thought he'd stop me," he whines.

"Guess he didn't, huh?"

Jrr's face crumples.

"No. He said I was a disappointment of a son and killing would do me good. He said if I don't conquer my enemies I'll disgrace our whole planet and he'll disown me."

"That's rough," Fry sympathizes. He reaches out awkwardly and squeezes Jrr's thick shoulder. "Your dad sucks."

"Yeah," Jrr says softly.

He starts to cry again, but Fry doesn't try to talk him out of it. He just lets Jrr sob, and when the boy's cloak is too sodden to absorb any more tears, he silently hands over his hat.

It is at this point that he looks up, and his gaze meets Leela's. Recognition flashes across his face, and he actually starts to _smile_. He opens his mouth, lips moving to form her name, but before he can get it out Leela's glare nails him to the wall.

That scares him into shutting up.

Eventually he seems to realize admitting he has met her before would get her into trouble. Maybe he thinks this is the reason behind her frostiness, because when he figures it out he catches her eye again and essays a small smile.

Leela ignores it.

* * *

><p>The Training Center is the tallest building Leela has ever seen. She feels dizzy just looking at it. It is matte black, like the hovercraft they arrived in, and all the windows are tinted black. Inside, every surface is cool and shiny. Halogen lights glint high above her head, and black marble floors stretch off into the distance. It's all a far cry from the filth of the sewer. Leela knows she is supposed to find it luxurious, but to her this new world is creepy and clinical.<p>

Every tribute has their own suite of rooms. Food and drink will be delivered at their request, the Peacekeepers explain. They can rest tonight, but tomorrow morning they will be expected to report to the basement level for training. Each tribute will then be assigned to a previous victor, who will mentor them for the duration of the Games. As the pool of victors is so small, Leela knows she'll be sharing her mentor with at least one other tribute. But that shouldn't be a problem. She doesn't trust anyone here except herself. She certainly won't be relying on some stranger to get her out of the arena alive.

Her mentor is a problem for tomorrow, anyway. Tonight's problem is simpler: sleep.

Leela can't relax in her quiet, echoey suite of rooms. Everything smells sterile. The bed is huge, and the sheets are pressed so sharply she feels as if she is being smothered when she tries to lie down under them. The food she ordered earlier sits strangely in her stomach. None of it was familiar. She tried to order mushrooms, but they came with pasta and peppers and a white wine sauce, and the pancakes she had for dessert were cloyingly sweet. It doesn't help that she can't seem to shut off her mind. Every time she shuts her eye she sees her mother screaming. The minute she feels herself begin to relax the image of another tribute flashes before her and she tries to picture them dead. In two weeks' time, she reminds herself, she will have to make that picture a reality, or else she's never going home.

It is almost a relief when the knock sounds on her door after midnight. At this point, Leela would welcome a lost Peacekeeper or even a bloodthirsty fellow tribute, if they would tire her out enough to sleep.

She finds herself rethinking her willingness to open the door when she sees who is on the other side.

"Wait up!" Fry cries, when she moves to slam it shut again. He wedges his foot in the door frame. "I just want to talk to you!"

Leela scowls. She has to fight hard to keep her voice level.

"Unless you want to get killed two weeks early, I'd go back to bed."

Fry blinks.

"You wouldn't hurt me," he said uncertainly. "We're friends."

Leela glares at him.

"Friends?" she spits. "What planet are you on?"

"Um . . . Earth?"

"We're not friends, idiot."

"We could be," Fry says. As if it matters. As if it could ever be that simple.

Leela takes a minute, takes him in. A skinny sixteen year old (fifteen year old? She doesn't even know) with rumpled red hair and wide, hopeful eyes. They have him dressed in red and black tribute pajamas the twin of her own, but his feet are bare. He looks cold.

Why is he so hard to hate?

"Ugh." Leela groans. "Get in," she tells him.

She tugs him in by his collar, ignoring his protests.

"Relax. I'm not going to hurt you." She folds her arms. "You wanted to talk."

"Huh?"

Fry looks disoriented, although that might have something to do with the fact that Leela has just pushed him onto her bed, and is now standing over him, glaring. He is a teenage boy, she supposes. His imagination probably runs on the usual track.

"You wanted to talk," she reminds him. "So quit staring and talk."

Fry nods quickly.

"You're mad at me and I don't know why," he blurts out. "And you're in the Games and you're kind of scary now but I still want to be friends. And we have matching pajamas. Do you think we all have matching pajamas? It's kinda creepy if we do. And the pajamas are all silky, I don't like it. It's cold. What's the point of clothes that don't even keep you warm at night? I want normal pajamas."

He yanks at the fabric like it's driving him to distraction. Leela just stares at him. She thinks her mouth might be hanging open a little, but it's forgivable, because Fry has thrown so much weird at her she doesn't think she can process it all at once.

The pajama thing, she decides, is probably just a case of his mouth running away on him. He seems like the type to babble when nervous. The fact that he finds her scary is strangely flattering – it means she reads as a threat to other tributes, which is exactly what she wanted – but his offer of friendship is weird. Tributes don't befriend each other in the Games. They make alliances or form a pack. And they don't call each other scary like it's a _bad_ thing. In the Games, scary is a definite plus.

All of this pales beside his opening statement, however.

"You signed up for the _Games," _Leela says furiously, "and you don't know why I'm mad." When Fry says nothing, she realizes she will have to elaborate. It only enrages her further. "You, a _human_, signed up for the Games. Against me, a _mutant_. And you have no idea why I might be just the _teensiest bit_ ticked off about that?"

"No, I -"

"_You signed my death warrant!"_

The words ring out in the silence. Leela's breathing is ragged, and Fry has gone white.

"I don't understand," he says.

"You're human," Leela says harshly. "This whole system is set up to remind mutants and aliens we're not as good as you. That's the whole point of the Games! It's not about giving us a chance or pretending we're all equal. It's not about giving us hope! It's about making sure hope isn't worth it, because it costs too much!"

What the hell is she saying? Where is all this coming from? The words feel wrenched from some dark, hidden place inside her, and they terrify Leela. They make her wonder what other feelings she's been hiding from herself.

"If we win," she hears herself say, "it's because everyone like us died, or because we killed them, and we have to live with that! If you're non-human and you win the Games it's not because you were strong or smart or . . . or anything you tell yourself! It's because you're a killer. Because you're whatever the Gamemakers want you to be, you're just a piece, you don't matter . . ." She trails off, the fight going out of her. "But I was going to do it," she says softly. "I was going to do it this year, I was going to win. It was going to be worth it to save my mother." A hot tear slides down her cheek. She hates herself for it. "I had a shot," she tells Fry, "and now I don't, because you entered. You're human, don't you get it? The Gamemakers will want you to win, sponsors will want you to win, everyone watching you is going to love you no matter how useless you are, because you're _human_. I should kill you right now."

She doesn't, of course. It's not even a real threat. She's too upset to act on it, and Fry is in a world of his own, still grappling with what she has just told him. He doesn't even seem to notice her last few words.

"You're . . . you're not," he manages at last.

"Not what?"

Fry frowns, like putting his thoughts into words is the hardest thing he's ever had to do.

"Not not as good as us," he says. "Not . . . what they want you to be. I don't know. But I think . . . I think you matter. I think all of us matter, even in the Games."

Leela stares at him. She really needs to stop, but . . . no-one in her entire life has ever said anything like that. Fry must be crazy. The idea that aliens and mutants might be as good as humans, coming from a human . . . it doesn't make any sense. He might as well be speaking gibberish, except that gibberish doesn't spark off hot, angry, confused feelings in the people who hear it. Gibberish doesn't make sense and no sense all at the same time, and gibberish has never made her feel scared the way this does. Like if peacekeepers were to overhear it, they might put a bullet in the back of her head just for listening.

"You have to go," she blurts out. "You shouldn't be here."

Fry nods.

"I know," he says. He hesitates by the door. "I'm really sorry," he mumbles.

The door swings shut behind him. Leela hits the lights off and dives into bed, a ball of terror fighting its way up her throat. She has to stop thinking like this. The Games start in two weeks time, she can't afford to think like this.

She has to be ready, she has to be a killer, no matter what it means . . . no matter how it makes her feel.

It isn't until the next morning, when the hot water in the Training Center shower is drumming down on her forehead, that a new thought hits her – one which has nothing to do with her own fate, or the right and wrong of the Games.

_He shouldn't be here. _

The words have played themselves over and over in her head, from the minute she first saw Fry on that hovercraft, but she still managed to miss it, somehow. Fry is human. Fry already lives on the surface. Fry is absolutely not a Career.

So what the hell is he doing in the Games?


	3. Chapter 3

Leela looks for Fry the next morning at breakfast, but he is sitting on the other side of the hall with Jrr. If she walks over now, everyone will see. The other tributes will suspect her of trying to make an alliance, and the Peacekeepers will wonder what makes a mutant girl think she has the right to talk to a human on the first day of training. So she hangs back, chewing her protein-heavy breakfast and trying to figure out a way to get him alone.

It's harder than it should be.

After that first night, the tributes eat their meals together in the dining hall, and train all day in the basement. They train under the watchful eyes of mentors and Gamemakers, and Leela herself has to be watchful if she is to maintain any chance of survival. She needs to suss out her competition, get to know the other tributes' strengths and weaknesses. She needs to hone her own skills too. She isn't familiar with surface terrain, and there are weapons here she's never even heard of. Most days she hardly has time to note Fry's presence in training before her attention is dragged in another direction.

The Mentors are announced two days into the training schedule. Head Gamemaker Abner Doubledeal lines up all 24 tributes and assigns them each to one of the nine previous Victors. Leela has been telling herself she doesn't care one way or the other about her future mentor, but she still feels nervous as she waits for her name to be called. This is the closest she's ever been to a winning tribute.

The closest she's ever been to a killer.

The Careers are mainly assigned to the most brutal mentors. Leela doesn't know if this is a coincidence or not, but she suspects not.

Elzar is the first mentor to go. He is a brawny, four-armed Neptunian, and the winner of the first ever Games. He is the oldest mentor. His face is worn and scarred, and one of his four arms ends in a stump. He lost it to another Career during his Games. Elzar's winning strategy was brute strength – he hacked fifteen fellow tributes to pieces with a machete. Leela is privately glad she doesn't have to spend any time with him.

Kif Kroker, who won just last year, is the next mentor she can cross off her list. He is an Amphisobian in his late teens, with a slight build and a mild expression that belies a fiercely tactical mind. He won his Games through cunning, getting in early with the Career pack and letting them lord it over him while he undermined them from the inside. He destroyed their supplies and then turned the paranoid tributes against each other, playing on their mutual mistrust until the entire pack was dead. There was only one tribute left after that - a girl from his own planet. They fought bitterly, but he won in the end. He pushed her into an electrified fence and she burned from the inside out. Leela still remembers the smoke pouring from the girl's eyes and mouth. It was such a good death it is guaranteed to show up in reruns every year. Kif gets three tributes to mentor, including this year's Amphisobian girl, and the soft-hearted Omicronian Jrr.

Langdon Cobb is the next to go, and Leela is thoroughly relieved not to get him. Cobb makes her uneasy. She's not sure what species he is. When he entered the Games his consciousness was split between two physical forms. One was humanoid and the other was a four-legged fungal creature that swelled to match his ego. Cobb was deadly, but his Games were dull. No-one could look at his bare face without getting their life force sucked out. He won by sneaking up on the other tributes and removing the hood that covered his face. The deaths were quick and bloodless, and could only be shown from certain angles because of the danger to viewers at home. To make things worse, he won in only three days. The Gamemakers were obviously furious, because they unleashed a wave of toxic rain for the big finale. Cobb's humanoid form was left hideously scarred by it, and his secondary form was completely destroyed. Whatever he is now, he's only half the person he is supposed to be, and it gives Leela the creeps.

"Tributes assigned to Amy Wong!" Doubledeal bellows. The Head Gamemaker has heavy eyebrows and a small squashed face, and sounds like he is announcing sports all the time. Leela dislikes him intensely. "Turanga Leela!" he shouts. "Celgnar An-Or Keeler! Philip J Fry!"

Leela swallows. _Amy Wong_. Her mentor is _Amy Wong_.

She follows Fry and the haughty Martian boy, Celgnar, to Amy's quarters. They stay silent in the elevator, though Leela can feel Fry's eyes on her the whole ride up. They flit back to his shoes every time she tries to catch him at it, but his furious blushing gives him away.

Fry is called in first to meet Amy, then Celgnar. Leela waits in the hall, counting up the minutes in her head. They both average ten or so, and come out looking serious (in Fry's case) and angry (in Celgnar's).

Her turn.

She knocks and steps inside.

"Hi! You must be Turanga Leela! It's so great to meet you!"

Amy's smile is bright and warm. In the flesh she's shorter than Leela. She has dimples.

_The tip of the harpoon snicks against Moose's throat. His hands claw desperately at his neck as he tries to close the wound, but the blood gushes out too fast – a rich red spray that coats Amy's face and neck as she leans over him. The sound he makes - _

Leela reels. Amy's smile flickers.

"Are you okay?"

Leela nods.

"Fine," she whispers.

"Oh, good. Sit down!" Amy pats the seat next to her. "Let's talk."

Earthican citizenship has radically transformed Amy Wong. The fat little girl with acne has been replaced by a glamorous, self-possessed young woman. Exercise or surgery has stripped her of any surplus weight. Her make-up is flawlessly applied – she is all blood-red lips and razor-sharp cheekbones. Black eyeliner flicks up in a sharp V at the corner of her eyes, making her look even fiercer. The strappy sandals on her feet have six-inch heels curved like silver blades, and the red cocktail dress she is wearing (in the middle of the day) clings to her every curve. She looks beautiful and deadly, every inch a killer.

She drops the chirpy act as soon as Leela sits down.

"I'm going to be your mentor," she says, "and I want you to know that I'll do whatever I can to make you win."

"Me?" This is surprising. "What about Fry? And Celgnar?"

"I told them the same." Amy stares at her intently. "I know you can't all win. But you're my tributes. I have to try and save you."

_Save you._ Leela feels a shiver run down her spine. People on the surface usually act like the Games are fun. If Amy wants to save them, it means she admits there are horrors they need saving from.

"So," Amy says briskly. "Let's run through your strengths and weaknesses. I've been watching you in training the past two days, and I've seen your application. Wanna hear what I think?"

Leela nods.

"Strengths first then." Her new mentor sits back and studies her. "You're fit. You have great survival skills, and if it ends up being hand-to-hand combat, I feel good about your chances. You have a pretty good rack too. I can work with that." She shrugs. "If some skeezeball remembers you from the interviews, he might sponsor you later. It's worth a shot."

Leela looks at Amy, at her endless legs and low-cut dress. She swallows. The idea of some pervert human drooling over her in a similar dress makes her want to hurl, but she knows Amy is right. This is how the game is played.

"What are my weaknesses?" she asks. She's not vain enough to think she doesn't have any.

Amy's eyes narrow.

"You're a mutant," she says bluntly. "Mutants don't win. The surface thinks you're inferior genetic scum. You're actually not hideous though," she muses. "Apart from the eye. You might be close enough to human that the audience will like you, if you play it right." She sighs. "But that's your other problem. You're about as likeable as a Martian muck leech."

"What?"

"You didn't know?" Amy rolls her eyes. "Spleesh. Okay, look. Don't take this the wrong way, but you're aggressive and and you're closed-off and I'm not even sure you know _how_ to smile. I don't know what makes a girl desirable in the sewer, but humans _hate_ that stuff. You're too old for the little-sister schtick, so you basically have two options. Sexpot or sweetie pie."

Leela panics.

"I'm not either of those things!"

"G'uh! I know. That's why I said it was a problem." Amy appraises her again. "I'll work something out. We'll get you to talk about your mom in the interview. She's your only family, right? That'll tug some heartstrings. And maybe we just won't let you talk too much on camera. Go for the whole mysterious angle. It could work."

"Okay." Leela feels dizzy. "What else?"

"You need to practice with automatic weapons," Amy tells her. "I know you don't have them in the sewer, but you never know what the Gamemakers are planning. Guns and grenades could end up being all you have in there. Forget about showing off your skills for the other tributes. Just get good with guns, okay?"

This is surprisingly good advice. Leela finds herself taking it on board despite her earlier plans.

"I will," she says.

"Great. Now we need to talk about allies."

"No, we don't. I'm not teaming up with anyone."

"So you don't want to join the Career pack? You're good enough."

"No."

"What about Celgnar? You're both my tributes. I could pool my sponsorship funds if you guys worked together. Get you better stuff. And he's strong."

"No way." Leela shakes her head. "I don't trust him as far as I could throw him."

Amy concedes this point. She might have vowed to try and keep him alive, but Leela gets the impression she doesn't much like Celgnar either.

"How about Fry?" she suggests.

"_No,_" Leela says quickly.

"He's human," Amy argues. "He'll get sponsors."

"No," Leela repeats. "He's . . . he says things."

It's a weak explanation. She doesn't even know what makes her say that much. But to her surprise, Amy nods.

"I know." She looks past Leela, out the window. "Do you know what he said when he first came in here? He said I looked better than I did on TV."

"Well, you . . . you do," Leela says awkwardly. "Hotter."

Amy laughs.

"That's what I thought he meant. But he said no. He said I looked better than before because before, on TV, I looked like there was no-one behind my eyes, and now I look alive again. _Alive again_," she repeats.

She looks distant.

"What did you say?" Leela asks. She can't help herself.

Amy looks back, startled out of her reverie.

"I told him he shouldn't say things like that. I'm a Victor." Her smile is sad and empty. "I've never felt more alive."

* * *

><p>She never does manage to get Fry alone. She keeps trying, but eventually figures out the only way to get around their training schedule would be to sneak into his room at night, the way he snuck into hers. Unfortunately she has no idea which room is his. So she waits.<p>

Two weeks pass.

Leela trains with automatic weapons, as Amy recommended, and feigns interest in the Career pack. She has no intention of joining them, but she doesn't want them to see her as a threat just yet.

In her evaluation, she shows off her speed and strength for the Gamemakers, and they score her an eight out of ten. It's the best score a mutant has ever received, and narrows her odds considerably. Surface people might actually start betting on her now, and if they do that, they're more likely to protect their investment by sponsoring her later on. Celgnar also scores an eight. Fry, to Leela's surprise, scores a six. She wonders what he showed the Gamemakers in his trial. He hasn't displayed any real skills in training, after all. He spent most of his time at the survival stands, learning how to make fires and find food. Still, simply being human wouldn't earn him a six. He must be hiding some useful talent. Leela can't help but wonder what it is.

The interviews air the night before the Games.

The three of them sit backstage with Amy while they wait to be called. Their mentor is wearing a black leather minidress with sharp spikes sticking out of the shoulders. Her lips are blood-red again and her nails have been filed into points. They look like deadly weapons in their own right. She smirks and looks fierce every time the camera pans over her, but away from the prying eyes of the audience she's like a different person. She nervously gnaws her lower lip and fusses over her tributes. For the first time, Leela catches a glimpse of the plump little girl from two years ago, who blathered about ice-cream and ponies in her interview.

Fry is fidgeting with his cuffs. Celgnar seems calm, but the tip of his left shoe is tapping out an irregular rhythm.

Leela tries to ignore it all and focus on the interviews of the other tributes. The angles they take are familiar, tried and tested in previous years. She watches them cycle through crazy, cunning, seductive, bloodthirsty . . . None of it is new. In fact, it all progresses as expected until they get to Jrr. Leela had figured he and Kif might play the cute angle, but the boy surprises her by coming out in a high-necked crimson cape and talking about how excited he is prove himself to his father. He growls for the audience on command, and says he hopes there will be a traditional Omicronian fleem at the Cornucopia this year.

Leela almost buys it until he comes off stage and she sees how hard he is shaking. Celgnar snorts. Amy looks away, but Fry smiles.

"You did good," he says warmly.

Jrr stumbles on his cloak, but he smiles back before Kif pulls him away. Leela wonders if Fry has any idea how much his kind words mean to the kid.

Celgnar is up next. His interview is a disaster. The pride that intimidated the other tributes so well comes off as aloofness onscreen. He won't be drawn about his family, and when the interviewer, Linda, asks him about home, he can barely contain his contempt for humans. Leela doesn't blame him – humans took over his planet and turned him into a second-class citizen – but it makes her worry all the same. She hopes she can be a lot more convincing about how much she loves the surface when they ask her about life in the sewer. When Celgnar comes off he seems fully aware of how badly it went – he stomps back to his suite without speaking to any of them.

Leela is next in the running order.

The lights onstage are bright and hot. She can feel them melting the make-up on her face, and hopes they aren't making her sweat. Amy has her in a long, clinging velvet gown. It is slit up to the thigh and has a plunging neckline Leela had to stick down with double-sided tape earlier in the evening. She's still nervous about it.

She thinks the interview goes well. It's hard to tell because when she's up there, all she can think about is how dry her mouth is and how hard her heart is pounding. The sound of the audience laughing crashes in on her like a tide. Leela has never had so many eyes on her at once – she can barely breathe. She manages to get out something about her mother - how much she loves her and wants to win for her. Then something about how Amy is the most glamorous person she's ever seen and chose this dress for her tonight. She twirls when Linda asks her to, even though it makes her feel a little sick. She remembers to mention what an honor it is to be in the Games. Linda smiles indulgently at that, so Leela supposes she got the tone right, and silently thanks Amy for making her practice.

When she finally escapes she runs smack into Fry. Amy has dressed him in a charcoal gray suit and a dark green shirt. Silk, Leela notes. The collar is crumpled - it must be driving him nuts. The hair Amy spent all evening smoothing into place is mussed again, and there are scuff marks on his shiny black shoes. Close to, Leela can see his nails are bitten to the quick and starting to bleed. He must be really nervous.

"Don't look at the audience," she hears herself say. "It makes it worse."

Fry blinks.

"Thanks," he says hoarsely.

They're still tangled awkwardly together. Fry's hands are on her forearms and hers are on his chest. She can feel his heart thudding under her palm. She flinches when he reaches out to touch her cheek, but Fry doesn't seem to notice. He just holds up his hand, frowning at the pinky-yellow stuff on his fingertips.

"Your face is melting. Is that normal?"

Leela blushes hotly.

"It's cover-up," she tells him. "For my freckles."

"Oh. I wondered where they went. Well . . ."

"Fry!" Amy shrieks. She appears at his elbow, looking panicked. "They're calling you! Get out there!"

"Oh, crap!"

He wipes his hand on his suit jacket and lets go of Leela, stumbling onto the stage. She catches a glimpse of him tugging on his collar again, and then Amy pulls her backstage, where they can watch him on a monitor and discuss Leela's own performance.

Amy tells her she did good, that she came off as humble and the double-sided tape stayed in place. Both things are a relief to hear.

Onscreen, Fry is explaining how a human being ends up competing in the Games. He has no Earth cert, he explains, because he was born -

"Wait, did he just say a _thousand years ago_?"

Leela thinks her eye might boggle out of her head.

Amy nods.

"Oh, yeah. It's a really weird story."

"It's my fault," Fry says. "I was in the city with my parents and I ran off. I was chasing a hamster. I think it was a hamster. It _looked_ like a hamster. I was hoping it could be friends with my guinea pig, but I couldn't catch it." He looks faintly bewildered, as if he still can't quite figure out how he was outwitted by a rodent. "Anyway," he continues, "I fell in this freezer-tube thingy and when I woke up it was a thousand years in the future. And everyone I ever knew was dead, I guess." He shrugs. "I had a great-great-great nephew somewhere, but he didn't want me, so they put me in the orphanarium."

"An _orphanarium_," Linda coos. "How sweet! I expect you learned a lot there."

Fry frowns. By the look on his face it's clear he has never heard the words "sweet" and "orphanarium" in the same sentence before.

"I . . . guess? Warden Vogel taught me how to find valuables in trash, and how to stop the rats eating my socks. Warden Proctor taught me I was mentally deficient and a drain on the state." He appears to think for a minute. "I think I preferred Warden Vogel."

Behind her, Leela can feel that Amy has frozen. The audience don't seem sure how to take Fry's comments about the orphanarium. Some of them titter nervously, like they think he might be joking. Others frown, or simply look confused.

Linda falls into the confused category.

"Well," she says limply, "I'm sure your experiences there have helped mold you into the resilient young man you are today!"

Fry blinks.

"I . . . know I broke a lot of bones?" he offers.

Linda gives up. She flashes him a false, dazzling smile, and decides to pretend she can't hear him.

"Why don't you tell us all about your decision to volunteer for the Games?" she asks. "That must have been exciting!"

Fry shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

"I, um . . . I'm gonna be sixteen in a month. And I don't have an Earth cert. It was the only thing I could think of."

Linda smiles her plastic, overstretched smile.

"But surely you could earn citizenship when you turn sixteen?" she says. "I'm sure -"

"No, I couldn't. I'm not smart," Fry interrupts. "I don't have any special skills. I'm useless, I _know_. They made us do tests at the orphanarium, for career day, and my future career was 'An Ingredient In Soylent Green'. If I don't win the Games, I'll turn sixteen and they'll send me away to the work camps on Halley's Comet. I can't go there!"

Amy sucks in her breath. Linda's smile flickers. The audience are suddenly so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

Leela doesn't understand what's so wrong with what Fry said, but she senses now is not the time to ask. Not when Amy's eyes are riveted to the screen.

"Well, everyone has their place -" Linda starts to say, but Fry shakes his head furiously.

"I'll die there," he states, matter-of-fact. "That's what happens on Halley's Comet. You mine ice all day in the cold, and then you get sick and you die. And you probably end up in a can of Soylent Green. Everyone knows that."

The audience gasp. Linda stares at him, mouth hanging open like a fish. Backstage, Amy has put a hand over her mouth and is whimpering quietly. Whatever she coached Fry to say in his interview, this was obviously not it. This is . . . well, crazy. It's like he stood on that stage and set off a bomb. Leela can't comprehend it. All he had to do was get up there and play nice, do whatever Amy told him to. He's human. The audience want to love him, the Gamemakers want him to win. And he just blew it up in their faces. Leela never heard of Halley's Comet before tonight, but it's obviously one of the Nixon administration's dirty little secrets. The kind everyone knows about, and no-one is ever, ever stupid enough to talk about.

Like the terrible conditions in the sewer, she thinks suddenly. The accident that killed her father, the lack of medicine that almost killed her mother. Leela would never be stupid enough to talk about them on television – to assume anyone up here even cares – but later on, when she is lying sleepless in her bed again, she shuts her eye and tries to imagine herself in Fry's shoes. She imagines that she was the one to shut Linda up, that she was the one to make the pampered surface audience so uncomfortable. Of course, that would also make her the one everyone is now too scared to sponsor, and her the one Amy spent half the night screaming at, but in this imagined reality, Leela finds she doesn't care. Someone spoke the truth for once, and it was her. Even if she dies in the Games, the surface can never take away that one moment when they were held accountable for the things they do. It was brave, she realizes. What Fry did was stupid, but . . . he had nothing left to lose, and he chose to go out fighting the crooked system Leela has hated her whole life.

He hasn't got a hope in hell of winning the Games, she thinks, but he's braver than her.

The thought makes her feel strange, like something inside her has shifted. Like a long-forgotten second Leela is trying to step out from under her skin. She tightens her grip on the blankets and forces her eye shut, pushing the feeling away.

The Games begin in six hours time.


	4. Chapter 4

The tributes are loaded back into the hovercraft the morning of the Games. Strapped into their seats and injected with tracking devices at the start of the ride, they fly in silence.

Leela thinks she might be sick. She made herself eat a good breakfast this morning, on Amy's orders, but she is regretting it now. It keeps threatening to make a reappearance.

They disembark and are shepherded into separate rooms in an underground silo. Each room contains nothing but a chair, a toilet, and some clothes, set up behind a folding screen. In the corner is a launch pad, which will take the tributes up into the arena when it's time. Leela dresses quickly, taking note of the outfit the Gamemakers have provided. Sturdy boots, khaki combat pants and a black shirt with long sleeves. Thick socks and a heavy, knitted green sweater. The whole thing is topped off with a black waxed jacket. Wherever she's going, it's unlikely to be hot. That could be good - she won't dehydrate so fast - but the sweater and jacket suggest potential cold. Not so good.

A siren wails. The sound is high and thin in the sterile room. Leela's stomach roils again, but she forces herself to swallow back the vomit and ignore the burn in her throat.

She can do this. _She can do this_.

Two Peacekeepers appear in the doorway. Their expressions are stony, and they march her to the launch pad without looking at her. The plastic tubing surrounds her with a pneumatic hiss. Leela fights the urge to scream. The tube is suffocating, but she can't be in it more than thirty seconds before a second siren starts, and the pad under her feet begins to rise.

The room falls away and darkness swallows her.

Higher, higher . . .

She glides through the ceiling, through dark layers of thick, oppressive earth . . .

And then dazzling sunlight breaks through. Fresh, cold air hits her, and Leela steadies herself.

_10 . . ._

_9 . . ._

The countdown has already begun. She has to take stock of her surroundings.

_8 . . ._

This year's arena is dry but cold. The ground is stony – gravel, she thinks – and dilapidated buildings line the horizon. It's a city, she realizes. A ruined city. Like the remains of Old New York, but above ground.

_7 . . ._

_6 . . ._

The tributes are still on their podiums. Jrr is on her left side. The aggressive pink amoeba is on her right. Mrrxxs, Leela thinks her name was.

_5 . . ._

_4 . . ._

They are arranged in a semi-circle around the glittering golden mouth of the Cornucopia. It is forty, maybe fifty feet away. Weapons, food . . . everything they need to win is waiting within reach. All they have to do is survive the inevitable bloodbath to get it.

_3 . . ._

Leela tenses.

_2 . . ._

Takes a deep breath . . .

_1._

Without stopping to think, she jumps off her podium and dives into the throng.

Fry is twenty feet away from her, the closest of all of them to the Cornucopia. But he stumbles off his podium and starts to run in the opposite direction, towards the city on the horizon. Away from the fight.

Leela dodges a thrown knife.

On her left Celgnar has found a spear. It lashes out at someone she can't see and comes back coated in blood. There are screams.

A hand grenade lands in the dirt behind her, showering her in shale, but her waxed jacket protects her from the worst of it and she forces herself on.

Closer, closer . . .

Blood fountains over her feet. Something knocks against the side of her head and she staggers, her vision blurring.

She has to keep going. She has to.

She dives into the shadow of the Cornucopia, grabs the first backpack she sees and pulls it on. Her fingers curl around the handle of a serrated hunting knife.

Jrr appears in her field of vision, grappling with a Carcaron girl. The Carcaron clamps her teeth around his arm but he shakes her off easily. He picks up a fleem in one hand and two backpacks in the other. He spins the fleem, staring down at the stricken Carcaron girl – but he doesn't attack. He just looks in the direction of the city, then turns and runs. The girl shrieks in rage, spitting out teeth.

Leela makes to run, but something grabs her ankle. She screams. All around her is blood, blood, chaos, noise . . .

The knife flashes through the air on reflex. It slices through a thick, viscous substance, and a bright pink feeler flops to the ground, oozing fluid.

She runs.

When she looks back, Mrrxxss is battling a stocky Neptunian. One of Elzar's Careers. Mrrxxss is missing a feeler, and the Neptunian is bleeding from a gash on his stomach.

The air is thick with screams.

Jrr is far ahead of her. Bullets pepper his back, but they bounce harmlessly off his scaly hide and then he is gone, out of range.

Leela keeps going. Her head is ringing. Her palms are slick with sweat. _Don't drop the knife, _she tells herself. _Can't drop the knife. _

She feels as if her grip on reality is slipping. The horizon is swimming before her eye, she can barely breathe. Everything is blood and screaming. The boom of the cannon keeps crashing in her ears.

By the time she reaches the cover of the ruined city she is keyed up, terrified. She hurls herself through a doorway, up a seemingly endless flight of stairs, and into a cold and dusty room. There are concrete blocks and broken furniture strewn on the floor, enough for her to barricade the door. She does so quickly, then retreats to a corner. Back pressed against the wall, she desperately tries to regulate her breathing.

She can't. The bloodbath isn't like it is on television. Television couldn't capture the smell of blood, or the awful, heart-pounding confusion she felt in the middle of it all. Practicing in the Training Center hadn't prepared her for the way it felt when her knife slid through sentient flesh. Avoiding the other tributes during training hadn't made it any easier to watch them die.

She lets the knife she is holding clatter to the floor and hugs the backpack to her chest. The images stuck in her head are terrible. She searches her memory for something brighter, something to force them out. Scattered fragments are all that comes to her. Her father whistling on a Sunday morning. Her mother's eye opening after her long illness. The tinkling of the xylophone she made as a child. The sight of her parents dancing round the kitchen when she was very small, before everything got so hard. Fry's shy smile when they were children, and the way his thumb felt when it brushed against her cheek backstage.

Her breathing slows.

* * *

><p>It's dark when Leela wakes. Her fingers and toes have gone numb, and her muscles are stiff. When did she fall asleep? She can't even remember.<p>

The cyclops forces herself to her feet. Her makeshift barricade is undisturbed, at least. However long she spent dead to the world, no-one found her.

_You were lucky_, she tells herself. _You can't afford to drop the ball like that again_.

She makes herself walk back and forth across the room a few times, until the feeling returns to her limbs.

There will be cameras watching her, she knows. Her post-bloodbath freakout will have cost her any sponsors she won at interview. She needs to re-establish herself as a contender, as someone in control.

It has started to rain outside. Heavy sheets of the stuff sleet down out of the sky; dirty gray but still purer than anything the sewer ever threw at her. It's the first night, she reminds herself. The Career pack will be making camp. They'll be tired, and in this weather they won't want to come after her. The other tributes will be trying to make alliances of their own, or familiarize themselves with the arena.

Leela cleans her hunting knife and wedges it snugly into the side of her boot. Then she opens up the backpack she retrieved at the Cornucopia, laying the contents out on the floor so she can assess her haul. There is a large sheet of heat-reflective foil to keep her warm at night, a canister of water (blessedly full), a tub of trail mix, and a packet of buggalo jerky. There are some iodine drops in there too, to purify any water she might find later, and a grand total of three matches. It's not much but it's better than nothing. If she wraps the foil around herself and remembers to eat at intervals through the night, she should be able to make it til morning with just her own body heat to keep her warm. Lighting a fire when she doesn't know the location of the other tributes is a risk she'd rather not take. At least, not yet.

She takes up position by the broken window and chews on some jerky, watching the street for any signs of life.

An hour passes. The rain slacks off a little, and then the Earthican anthem begins to play, blasted out from hidden speakers all around her. A hologram of the flag – Ol' Freebie, what a joke – is projected onto the sky. The faces of the fallen follow it.

This year's bloodbath at the Cornucopia must be some kind of record – Leela counts fifteen dead tributes in total. The Careers mostly made it through, as did Celgnar, Jrr, the Decapodian boy, the Amphisobian girl, and Fry. When his face fails to appear among the dead, Leela lets out a breath she hadn't even realized she was holding. She thinks about Jrr – about the two backpacks he picked up at the Cornucopia, about the way he grabbed that fleem thing but didn't use it. He looked in the direction Fry ran in, then fled without attacking anyone. She wonders if he and Fry made an alliance. She wonders how long it would keep either of them alive.

* * *

><p>The next morning dawns bright but cold, so Leela packs up early and goes hunting for her adversaries. She's not planning to take them on yet, but it won't hurt to know where they are.<p>

It's not long before she tracks down the Career pack. They have set up camp at the Cornucopia itself. The bodies from yesterday's fight have been airlifted away. If it weren't for the bloodstains and the horrific flashbacks just _being_ here triggers, Leela could almost forget the carnage. The Careers have gathered up the remaining supplies and piled them into the mouth of the golden horn. Two of them – Mrrxxss with her oozing feeler, and a short, muscular Neptunian boy - stand guard there now. Brett the gelatinous green bully-blob is arguing with the shark-like Carcaron girl some distance away. The source of the friction seems to be a disagreement over which tributes to hunt down first.

"Mutant Girl!" Mrrxxss hollers. "She _cut_ me!"

"We need to take out that snotty little Omicronian," the Carcaron girl insists. "He's got no stomach for killing but he's tougher than he looks, and he's armed. He nearly got me yesterday! We can't let him walk around like he owns the place. Either he joins the pack or he's out."

"Joins the pack? Hah. In his dreams."

"Yeah, Daddy's Boy isn't a threat right now. We can always deal with him later. I say we get the Martian, then Mutant Girl. I don't trust either of them as far as I could throw 'em."

"And the human?"

"Forget about it, he's toast. Even the Gamemakers won't want to help him now, and without sponsors you _know_ he don't stand a chance. You all saw him in training."

There is an outbreak of unpleasant laughter, and then they start talking about what to eat for breakfast. Leela retreats.

So Celgnar is first on their hit list, then her. Best be careful.

Leela spends most of the morning exploring the ruined city. Not that there's much to see. Just one worn-out high-rise after another. It's all cement – no greenery at all – but there are owl droppings on the higher floors, and evidence of rats. She could find meat in a pinch.

She finds the remains of a garbage nest - and some sucked-clean rat skeletons - in an alleyway, but no trace of the Decapodian boy who must have left them behind. Eventually she gives up trying to track down the others and simply heads back to the safety of a high building. The afternoon is spent trying to bait rats with the last of her jerky. A few are fool enough to come close, but they jump out of range before her knife can catch them. It's too big for such small prey. What she needs is a proper snare, but she has nothing to make one with.

Hunger creeps in. It starts to rain again.

She catches sight of the Amphisobian girl once, way off in the distance. She must have come out to enjoy the rain because she spins around in it, laughing. When the Careers approach she simply clambers up the side of a high-rise on suckered fingertips. They never even see her.

Leela drains the water in her canister. Filling it with rain and then purifying it kills some time, but soon enough it's back to boredom. She knows she should be out there killing things, making the audience like her, but it all seems like so much effort. She's tired, cold, and hungry, and the images from the Cornucopia still won't leave her alone. It's too early in the game to make any kills, she tells herself. She needs more time. The Careers will take care of most of the competition anyway. Wasn't that her original plan? To sit tight, wait it out, and then kill the last few standing? It should still work.

She stays hidden by her window for three days. Hunger claws at her stomach and the temperature drops again. The rain sleets down non-stop, in thick, drenching sheets.

On the second day the Decapodian boy dies. Celgnar corners him down in the street and crams his spear into the folds of shell coating the boy's stomach, cracking him open like a lobster. When the kid is down he plunges his hands into the wound and rips out one strange-looking organ after another, flinging them aside into the street, until finally the boy stops twitching and the cannon booms. Leela throws up pure bile, and doesn't stop shaking until she falls asleep.

On the third day she rigs herself a trap. It's pretty basic – a half-brick tied to her shoelace and suspended above her last decrepit piece of jerky – but after an hour of waiting she squashes a rat. There's not much meat on the critter – he's hardly worth the fire she risks to cook him – but it's something, and she feels better after eating.

The Careers whoop with joy when they see the Decapodian boy's face in the sky on day two. They are in a sour mood. Unable to track down anyone to kill, they have taken to fighting among themselves. They say they're just testing their reflexes, but anyone can see how high the tension is running. With any luck they'll snap soon and take each other out.

Of course life can't be that simple. Leela realizes this too late. The Careers have been extra bloodthirsty this year, but they haven't spaced out their kills well enough. They haven't provided a good show – and nor has Leela, tucked away in her hideyhole. Too late she remembers that starvation and her fellow tributes aren't the only dangers in the arena. She has to contend with the Gamemakers too.

They strike on the fourth morning. Leela wakes to a muted rumbling, like the sound of rush-hour traffic above the sewer. Only this rumbling is coming from below, shaking her heart in her ribcage, making her stomach flip.

She half sits up, clutching her backpack.

Something is wrong.

There is a screech from below – a great yawing scream of tormented metal and crumbling brickwork – and then the building collapses, taking Leela down with it.


	5. Chapter 5

Her vision is black. Brick dust clogs her nose and mouth and her entire body aches, but somehow, miraculously, _she's still alive_.

Leela can't see anything. For a moment she's scared the collapse has blinded her, but when she shifts a little a chink of light breaks through, and she realizes that she's just trapped under a lot of rubble.

_Move_, she tells herself. _You have to move_.

The cyclops feels dazed and winded, but she doesn't think she lost consciousness at any point, and she's not pinned under anything she can't lift. She can hardly believe her luck – until she raises her right hand and almost screams out loud.

No. _No_. It can't be broken.

Maybe it's just swollen. Maybe she banged it at a bad angle, or briefly cut off the blood supply, or maybe she is so acutely stressed she's hallucinating the whole thing. That can happen, she's heard of it. Psychosomatic pain. Maybe that's it.

Or maybe it's a sprain. Anything other than a break. If her arm is broken she's dead. She won't be able to fight or feed herself . . . oh, god. It's broken.

Leela struggles out of the wreckage, coughing. The dust is in her lungs, her hair, underneath her fingernails. As she stumbles across the street she can't shake the feeling that she is suffocating. She dives for the shelter of the building across the street. Gulps back the last of the water in her canteen, then sprays it over the floor when another coughing fit grips her. Pain shoots through her wrist.

_Broken_, she thinks numbly. _Broken, broken, broken_.

Somewhere the Gamemakers are sitting in luxury, laughing at her. They're probably congratulating themselves on a neat twist. Preparing to broadcast her picture in the sky and show her highlight reel to the audience. It makes her feel sick. Abner Doubledeal is going to murder her and pretend he was a good sport about it.

No. Not Doubledeal. Not really. He might be Head Gamemaker, but everyone knows who really runs the Games. Richard Nixon is the one with her blood on his hands. (Metaphorically speaking. Being a head in a jar and all, he doesn't actually have hands. Still. The point stands.)

Voices in the street outside bring her back to the present. Another wave of sickness floods her stomach. It's the Careers.

Of course – she should have known the sound of a building collapsing would get their attention. Leela shrinks back into the shadows and bites down on the collar of her jacket. She can't afford to cough or cry out in pain. Her hunting knife is buried in the rubble somewhere, and without the use of her right arm she doesn't think she could take on one of the Career pack – never mind three at once.

They pick through the debris, laughing.

"Whoohoo!" the Carcaron girl cries. "Go Gamemakers! Who do you think they got?"

"We don't know they got anyone. I didn't hear a cannon."

The Neptunian boy. Leela can just about see him, making lazy swipes at the rubble with his machete.

"That doesn't mean anything." This is the green blob. Brett. "There was a lot of noise. We could've missed it. Or there could be somebody under there." He grins. "Trapped."

"Dying slow."

"Yup."

"Guess we'll find out tonight either way."

"One down, though, right? Maybe the Gamemakers will flush out the rest of them the same way." This is the Carcaron girl again. "Now that I'd pay to see."

The conversation continues in this way for a while, as the Careers poke about in the wreckage. They don't bother to check any of the surrounding buildings. They obviously don't believe anyone could have survived the collapse. At last they head back to their camp at the Cornucopia, and Leela can breathe again. Most of the air is immediately wasted in another coughing fit, but eventually she clears the dust from her lungs and sits back to consider her situation.

Movement is impossible tonight. She is battered and bruised, and her stomach is more empty than she can take. The truth is that she is in no fit state to go anywhere. Like it or not, she has to rest.

The Careers will realize their mistake at midnight, when her face doesn't appear in the sky. Leela can only hope they will assume she fled the scene, and wait until morning to look for her. It isn't a hope she has a whole lot of faith in, but there's nothing else she can do. Unless a gift from a sponsor magically shows up to save her, she's doomed.

At least she can go out stoic, she supposes. The audience like that in a tribute. So she settles in for the night. The reflective foil has survived just fine in her backpack, and saves her the need to light a fire. She wraps it around herself, tucking in the edges for maximum insulation, then sets about crafting a makeshift splint for her arm. All she has to work with is a half a plank and the laces from her boots. She wants to scream as she ties it in place, but once she has it down it does help some. And it makes her look resourceful, so all in all it seems worth the pain.

The heavy rain starts up again. Leela sets her canister on the window to refill. The one benefit to her new position is that the damp brings out any number of bugs and beetles. Earthworms, slugs . . . at one point she even catches a snail. Desperate for any source of protein, she eats them all. Once she gets over the wriggling and the slime it's really not so bad, but she makes sure to play up her disgust for the cameras. With any luck this display of grossness will be so entertaining the Gamemakers will wait until morning to throw some new danger at her. It seems to work.

She doesn't sleep properly but she does start to doze. She doesn't even know she's doing it until she catches footsteps at the edge of her hearing. It's dark outside her window and there are figures in the street. Two of them.

The Careers. It must be past midnight. They have come for her after all.

Slowly, Leela drags her aching body upright. She picks up a plank from the floor. It isn't much of a weapon, and feels ungainly in the wrong hand, but there's no way in hell she's going to let them take her down without a fight.

"She's here," a voice says. "I can smell her."

"Alive?"

The second voice is frantic, and familiar. _Fry. _The shock is so huge she almost drops her plank.

Her lips form his name, but her throat is so dry the sound can't escape. The Careers haven't found her – Fry has. It doesn't make any sense.

"I can smell fresh blood," Jrr says. "She's definitely alive."

"Blood? She's _bleeding_? Oh my god, she's hurt. She could be dying. We have to find her!"

The panic in Fry's voice is too strong to be fake. It's the final straw for Leela. The plank clatters to the floor. She steps out of the shadows.

"Leela!"

Maybe she's just woozy from the hunger, but she didn't think a human being could move as fast as Fry does now. He is in front of her in a second, and then -

She freezes, thinking he has lunged for her throat. But he hasn't. Instead this skinny, mystifying boy has thrown his arms around her and pulled her into a crushing hug.

"You're alive," he chokes into her neck.

It feels weird. A little painful, because Leela is still an aching mess after the building collapse, but she minds it less than she should. The hug grounds her, makes her feel like a real person again instead of a cornered animal. It is warm and solid, which is another thing that shouldn't work, since the hugger himself is skin and bone.

"I'm alive," she confirms.

Fry nods fervently, but seems incapable of further speech. His face is hot against her neck.

Too hot.

Leela pulls back to take a better look at him. The color is high in his cheeks. His forehead is damp and he seems to be mostly breathing through his mouth. Shallow breaths at that. She frowns.

Fry is running a fever.

"You're sick," she tells him. She glances at Jrr. "He's sick. This isn't normal for a human."

The little Omicronian looks worried.

"It's not?"

"No."

"I'm fine," Fry interrupts. "You're hurt," he continues, his tone softening into concern again. "We heard the building go down," he mumbles. "I thought you were dead. But then they didn't show your face and I knew – I knew . . ."

It is Leela's turn to interrupt.

"I don't understand," she says. "Why are you here? What do you want from me?"

Fry blinks.

"You know. " He gestures vaguely at the space between them. "To be friends. You and me. Us."

"You mean . . . an alliance?"

Leela looks to Jrr for confirmation. He nods.

"I can't fight," she admits. She indicates her injured hand.

"I don't care."

"Then you're crazy."

"Then I'm crazy. So what?"

"Just come with us for tonight," Jrr puts in. "If you want to leave tomorrow you can. We won't hurt you. But he likes you and I don't know what to do with a sick human, so maybe we need you more than you think. Please?"

Leela looks at their beseeching expressions. She looks down the cold wet street.

What does she have to lose?

* * *

><p>Fry and Jrr have made camp in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of the city. It takes them an hour to make the journey back. Fry and Leela take turns leaning on Jrr, until he feels sorry for them and simply throws them both over his broad shoulders.<p>

Inside the warehouse a paraffin lamp is flickering. The boys have arranged some old crates around it to sit on. They give Leela smoky-tasting meat they say is owl, and fresh water to drink. Fry watches her eat in the lamplight, his eyes darting to and away the way they used to in the training center.

"Where did you get this?" Leela asks, holding up a wing.

Fry shrugs.

"I shot it. I have this gun, it shoots lasers. Jrr got it for me at the Cornucopia. It's good because it fries them."

"You humans have to cook your meat," Jrr explains. "It's hard when you can't light any fires. The Careers and all."

Leela nods.

"That makes sense. Still . . . you shot an owl, Fry? You must be a pretty good shot."

"I guess." Fry looks uncomfortable. "I used to play a lot of video games back in my time, before I got frozen. I can aim at stuff."

"That's why the Gamemakers scored you so high in your evaluation," Leela realizes.

"Yeah. They thought it would be useful. But I can't shoot people. I don't even like shooting owls," Fry confesses. "I figured that out in training. About the people, I mean. Not the owls. I never really thought about the owls, until I was in here."

"I got that."

Leela stares at him, incredulous. He is starving because he's too squeamish to kill his own meat. Definitely the product of a surface upbringing.

She feels a lot better with food in her stomach, so she sits back and takes a proper look at her new allies for the first time. Jrr is mostly unchanged. He seems more self-assured, and his scaly hide looks thicker than before, but other than that there is no change in him. Fry, on the other hand . . . Aside from the fever and the fact that he is far too thin, his face is streaked with dirt. His clothes are torn and ragged-looking, like Jrr's cloak, but on Fry's she can see definite bloodstains.

"What happened?" she asks.

"We were sticking to the edge of the city," Jrr says. "We didn't see another tribute for days. I think the Gamemakers got bored of us. They sent this pack of . . . _things_ . . . after us. Like your Earth wolves but bigger. Fiercer."

"Mutts," Leela guesses.

The Gamemakers do that sometimes. They cross-breed surface animals in a lab, douse them in chemicals and drive them crazy . . . then unleash the resulting horror-creatures on the tributes. In slang terms, they're known as "mutts". In the Games, they're almost certain death.

Jrr nods.

"I took care of them" - the light shines on his fleem, on his sharp yellow teeth - "but I wasn't fast enough."

Fry grimaces.

"It wasn't your fault they bit me."

"They _bit_ you?" Leela is horrified. "Show me."

Fry rolls up his left pant leg.

"Oh my god."

The wound is nasty. Teethmarks have mangled the flesh of his calf, and his improvised bandage is already bloody.

Even though she knows this must be the source of the fever already gaining hold of him, Leela insists on washing and redressing the wound. She puts some of her own iodine drops on it for good measure. As if any of it will do any good now. Fry needs medicine. Without it . . .

She pushes the thought away. There is only so much she can cope with in twenty-four hours.

A second issue rears its head when she realizes that Fry has no heat-reflecting blanket like hers, and he and Jrr can't set fires. He has been sleeping in the cold. With a _fever_. Jrr is no help either – he doesn't understand the problem, and his scaly hide doesn't give off any heat.

In the end she and Fry share the foil blanket. Jrr opts to take the first watch.

Fry falls asleep almost instantly. He curls into her, hot forehead pressed to her clavicle. Leela can feel his ragged breath over her heart. Half of her wants to wake him and push him back into his own space. The other half feels strangely protective.

"He likes you, you know," Jrr says quietly.

"Jrr -"

"_Likes_ likes you. He told me."

"I . . . right."

Leela doesn't know what to say to this.

"He was a mess the first night we were in here," Jrr goes on. "I wouldn't let him go back to the Cornucopia and he knew you were there. Every time the cannon went off he practically jumped out of his skin. When your picture didn't come up that night I thought he was gonna start crying, he was so happy." He grins a little. "Every day it was _'I wonder where Leela is'_ and '_I hope Leela's okay_'. And stuff about how pretty your eye is. There was a lot of that."

Leela snorts.

"My eye? His sponsors must be sending him hard drugs if he thinks that's pretty."

"They're not. He hasn't had anything from sponsors," Jrr tells her. "I got a whetstone to sharpen my fleem with though. I think Kif was trying to tell me I should get out there and use it."

"Why haven't you?"

It's a fair question, in Leela's mind. Jrr is a lot stronger than he looks. The more time she spends with him, the more certain she becomes – Jrr's weakness is all in his mind. He doesn't want to kill, and for an Omicronian - and a tribute in the Games - that doesn't make any sense.

He seems to know what she's thinking.

"Because that's not who I want to be," he argues. "In my species, killing is the only way to progress. You're not even considered an adult until you kill your first human. And after that day it's like it never stops. We take over whole planets! We kill our own families in these crazy honor feuds, we hunt everything . . . It's killing, killing, killing, all day long. But that's not me. I like cartoons and building model spaceships, and I like humans. I really do! I know they're stupid and puny, but they're funny. They have some good ideas." His eyes shift to Fry. "And a human was kinder to me than everyone on my home planet, so. But, well . . ."

He chews on his fingernails. Talons. Whatever.

Leela can sense something bad is coming.

"Well, what?"

Jrr sighs.

"I'm Omicronian," he says miserably. "If I lose control, if I let the blood lust take over, I'm scared I'll forget who Fry is. He'll just be . . . food. It's not my fault!" he protests. "It's in my biology. But it's happening already. Since the bloodbath, and the mutt things . . ." He shudders. "It's getting worse and worse. I think I love Fry more than I've ever loved anybody in my whole life. More than my parents, even. But his blood smells so good I wake up drooling sometimes, and I just know I was dreaming about eating him. Hunting him down, and biting and tearing . . . It's horrible. I feel like I'm not even in control of my own body."

Leela feels her good hand tighten on Fry's shoulder. He twitches, mumbles something incoherent in his sleep. After a moment he settles down again.

"Why are you telling me this?" she whispers.

Jrr meets her gaze.

"Because I think you care about him too," he says simply. "And I think you'd do what you have to do to keep him safe." He fingers the sharp edge of the fleem. "Even if he wouldn't want you to."

There is a long silence.

Jrr is asking her to kill him if ever tries to eat Fry. It's crazy, but in a strange way Leela respects it.

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Yes. Okay." She glances down at Fry. "I'll help you keep him safe. Against anyone."


	6. Chapter 6

Leela wakes feeling warm and sluggish.

Light is breaking over the horizon. Jrr sits hunched by the window, staring out at the street. He is turning something over in his huge hands. Something silvery. Too small to be his fleem.

"We got a parachute?"

Leela can't believe it. A parachute means a gift from a sponsor. Food, medicine . . . it means hope.

Jrr smiles tiredly.

"He did, I think." He indicates Fry. "But you guys were asleep and I didn't want to wake you. I thought sleep might help."

Leela can't deny she feels better for the rest. Her arm is still throbbing, but for the first time in days she didn't have to dredge up the energy to open her eye. She pulls herself upright. Fry is still asleep beside her. His condition has deteriorated during the night. His hair is slick with sweat and his forehead burns like a furnace under her hand.

He wakes up gasping when he feels her pull away.

"Leela?"

"Hey. Don't get up." She smiles. "Look what we got."

"A parachute?" Fry mumbles. "That doesn't make any sense. Why would they send us a parachute? They hate us."

"Apparently not." Leela takes the silver sphere from Jrr and cracks it open. "Let's see what we got."

What they get is a real splint for Leela, and clean bandages. There is a tub of ointment in there too. It is thick and goopy, with a sharp antiseptic smell. Leela tests a bead of it on her own skin, watching as it stops up the blood flow from a tiny scratch. It's some kind of coagulant, she realizes. It might finally stop Fry's wound bleeding, and kill off the infection to boot.

It's more than she could have hoped for.

"Thank you, Amy," she breathes. She has no idea what she and Fry could possibly have done to get sponsors, but the only one who could send them this stuff is Amy, and she could only send it with significant sponsor interest.

The morning passes quietly. Jrr flops into a corner to sleep, so Leela takes his position by the window. She washes Fry's wound again, applies the cream, and bandages it heavily. Afterward she makes him drink as much water as he can stomach, and tries to get him to lie down again. Fry insists on fixing the new splint for her first. His hands are unsteady but gentle. It doesn't hurt as much as Leela was expecting.

When he is done he sits down opposite her. The cold air plays across his face, takes down some of the flush in his cheeks.

"Have you -" He coughs. "You were at the Cornucopia. You stayed to fight. Did you - did you have to . . .?"

_Did you have to kill anyone?_ Leela knows what he's asking. Her throat goes dry. In her mind's eye she can see the blood on Celgnar's spear. The Decapodian boy twitching in the rain-washed street. Mrrxxss's feeler severed by her hunting knife.

"No," she says at last. "Did you?"

Fry shakes his head.

"Just the mutt things."

They lapse into silence.

"Leela?"

"Yeah?"

"Will you tell me about your life in the sewer?"

"Why would you want to know about that?"

"I just do." Fry's blue eyes bore into her. "It's your life."

Leela hesitates.

"Please?" he says softly.

She sighs.

"Alright."

Leela doesn't understand why her life in the sewer holds such fascination for him. If he is hoping she might expose some horrors on live television, like he did, he's in for a disappointment. With her mother still stuck down there, Leela doesn't dare say anything that could be used against her. She keeps it light instead, talking about her family and the things she learned in school. Mushroom pancakes on her birthday. Fishing on the lake. The tin-can xylophone. She mentions, as casually as she can manage, that her mother was ill once and they thought she wouldn't make it. It's hard to put into words how relieved she was when Munda woke up. Especially when she's not sure Fry understands what she is trying to say.

"I was so grateful," she murmurs.

Fry smiles, and she thinks maybe he understands after all.

"Do you miss them?" she asks out of the blue. "Your family, I mean."

Fry stares at his knees.

"Sometimes," he admits. "Sometimes . . . there's this moment some days, right before I wake up, where I don't remember. That's the worst."

"Me too," Leela whispers. "Sometimes I can't remember his face. My dad. I can't remember the way his voice used to sound."

Fry nods.

"I wanted it to stop hurting so much," he says. "But the more it stops hurting, the more I forget them. I don't want to forget them."

Leela swallows. There is a lump in her throat.

"I know."

"If I die here, no-one on this whole planet will remember them. I hate that."

"I know."

Leela feels useless. Grief was never something she knew how to handle. She touches his hand – feather-light, uncertain. If she is intruding he can pull away and they can pretend it never happened. But his fingers twine around hers instead.

Leela squeezes on instinct. Fry squeezes back.

* * *

><p>Another parachute glides down out of the sky that evening. Bread and broth.<p>

"I don't understand why they keep sending us stuff," Fry says. "We're not doing anything."

Jrr stuffs a whole, frantically squeaking rat into his mouth.

"It's you two," he says when he stops chewing. "They must like all the love stuff."

"What love stuff?"

Leela is mystified. She owes Fry. Likes him, even, and she is determined to help him survive, but there's nothing romantic about it. There haven't been any kisses or sappy declarations of love.

"All we do is talk," she says.

"And sleep together," Jrr points out. "You're doing it again tonight."

"We're conserving body heat!"

Jrr snorts.

"Yeah, by _cuddling_."

"I'm trying to keep him _alive!_" Leela spits, before she can cool down and rein in her mouth.

Fry blinks.

"You're trying to keep me alive?" he says. He looks confused, but hopeful.

Leela reddens.

"What do you think I've been doing all day?" she asks.

"I don't know. Helping me, I guess. Being nice." Fry has turned his own unique shade of red. "I was wondering why."

Leela stares at him. His fever is down. He is still clutching a hunk of the bread their supposed romance bought him. It hits her then that if Jrr is right and the "love stuff" is winning them sponsors, the wrong response could cost them everything.

"It's . . . I . . ." She can't think what to say. This is a disaster. "We're allies now," she manages. "Aren't we?"

Jrr shrugs. Fry only waits.

Not good enough. She needs to provide something more.

"You came looking for me," she says quietly. "When you thought I was hurt. You cared."

The last word is almost a whisper. It's painful to admit that she cares what he thinks of her, that she is weak enough to be affected by one stranger in here who cares whether she lives or dies. But she is.

"Of course I cared."

Fry's voice has softened to match hers. His eyes are wide in the flickering lamplight. The bread sits forgotten in his hand.

Jrr looks awkward.

"I think I'll take first watch again," he says, snapping the spell. "You guys should sleep."

Sleeping with Fry that night is awkward. Now that his fever has broken he doesn't curl so close, just lies next to her staring up at the rats in the rafters. Still, Leela feels _aware_ of him in a way she wasn't last night. The heat radiating off his skinny body, the way his warm breath tickles her skin . . . the things that comforted her the night before now make her nervous.

Without so much worry to distract her, she is acutely aware of the fact that she is lying down with a boy for the first time in her life.

A boy who likes her. _Likes_ likes her.

Oh, and both their lives may depend on Leela convincing a pampered surface audience they are falling in love.

The only experience she has in this area is the time Moose asked her out and she laughed in his face. She doesn't know how these things are supposed to go.

"What's wrong?" Fry asks. He swings onto his side, staring at her through the dark. "You look like you're thinking. Or something. You can ignore me if I'm wrong."

"Jrr said you like me," Leela blurts out. Her face is surely on fire. "He said you think my eye is pretty."

She laughs nervously. Saying it out loud, to a human, makes it sound even more absurd. As if he could really -

"I do."

"What?"

"I said, I do."

Is that a yes to both charges, Leela wonders, or just the eye thing? And why doesn't he seem ashamed of it?

"You think my eye is pretty?" she ventures.

"Yes."

Fry's voice catches in his throat. He is staring at her with an intensity Leela has never seen from him before.

"Why? It's hideous."

"No, it's not." His hand ghosts across her cheek. "It's beautiful."

He drops his hand, and Leela feels a pang of disappointment. She wanted him to keep touching her. She doesn't know why.

"I'm a mutant," she reminds him. "We're inferior genetic scum, remember? We're not beautiful, Fry."

"You are."

"You're crazy."

"Maybe. But I don't think it's the kind of crazy you can cure." Fry grimaces, shifting the weight off his injured leg. "And I still like your eye."

He sighs, settling down to sleep.

Leela watches him. His eyes are drifting shut, and his breathing has begun to even out.

She doesn't know what makes her say it.

"I like . . ."

She thinks about Fry's intent gaze, his kind words, the warmth of him curled against her heart.

"I like you."

* * *

><p>Leela is woken by the sound of rain hammering against the window pane. Fry's heartbeat is warm and steady underneath her cheek. They have tangled together in their sleep, limbs interlocking in a complex pattern she can't believe is accidental. When she shifts position the unexpected friction makes her breath catch. Fry shifts too, trying to pull her back. The movement only makes it worse – drags a low sound from the back of her throat and makes Leela want to move again, to . . . to what, exactly, she doesn't know. She can feel her pulse throbbing in places it has no right to. It doesn't help that Fry has such a tight hold on her, and now that he isn't battling fever, his body has decided it can spare the energy to fuel more awkward parts of his anatomy. This is both flattering and horrifying.<p>

_We're on TV_, Leela thinks. _Oh my god. My mother is watching this_.

She extricates herself quickly and shakes Fry by the shoulder.

"Fry, get up. It's morning."

Fry wakes slowly, with a lot of grumbling. Maybe he's tired, or maybe he just doesn't want to leave whatever dream he was in.

"Huh . . . wha . . . oh, no."

He looks down, mortified.

"You know what I could use?" Leela says brightly. "A shower. Or at least a wash. There's plenty of rain and I'm sure there's something around here we could use as a tub. Who cares if all we have is cold water?"

"Not me," Fry says quickly. He pulls the foil blanket up. "Cold water sounds good to me. Ice, ice cold water."

Leela flushes.

"I'll get right on that."

"Sure. Uh . . . ladies first!"

"I'll call you when I'm done."

"Great!" Fry looks relieved. "I'll just . . . sit here for a while. Until I'm, um . . . really awake."

"Good idea."

There is a snickering sound from behind her. Leela turns to see Jrr covering his mouth with his hand, shaking as silent laughter racks his form.

"I have some questions about human mating rituals," he chokes out. He doubles over, laughing too hard to say anything more. Leela has never seen him so amused.

She tries to pull herself together.

"Well, then you should ask Fry," she says. "He's the human."

Fry turns pink, sputtering incoherently.

"Leela!"

"Time to shower!"

"Stop laughing! _Jrr!_ I'm serious! Leela, help!"

* * *

><p>The cold water leaves her gasping, but it helps. By the time Leela returns her body is too numb to feel anything at all. Fry seems to feel the same. They are united in their annoyance at Jrr, who won't stop laughing, even when they throw the broth pot and their shoes at him. Eventually he laughs himself out of breath and just lies on the floor, holding his stomach.<p>

"You two are funny," he gasps.

"Shut up," they tell him together.

It's a weird day. The rain persists, heavier than Leela has ever seen it, so they stay inside. Fry shows her his laser gun. He shoots rats off the rafters, and they pick the bones clean for lunch.

They practice throwing stones at the overturned broth pot, and Leela tries hand-to-hand combat with Jrr. Her attempts at both are pathetic. Without her dominant hand, she is next to useless.

Water rises ankle-high in the street, and still the rain shows no sign of slacking off. They wonder aloud if the Gamemakers are trying to flush them out with a flood. It's too early to be sure, but they all agree that if the situation gets much worse they will give up their sanctuary and head for higher ground. Leela hates the thought of going anywhere near the high-rises after the collapse, but she hates the thought of drowning or catching pneumonia more. So she agrees that if worst comes to worst they should take shelter up high.

It isn't until Fry goes to take a sip of water from their canteen, and spits it all over the floor, that they realize the other problem with the rain.

It's salted.

"Why would they put salt in the rain?" Fry sputters, clawing at his tongue.

Leela and Jrr exchange looks.

"They're contaminating the water supply," Leela says. "They want to draw us out."

"Maybe not us," Jrr points out. "Celgnar is out there too. And the green girl."

"Still. The Careers have all the supplies piled up at the Cornucopia. Food. Water. Weapons. We're not stupid enough to go for them when we're outnumbered like this, and neither is Celgnar. The Gamemakers must be getting impatient."

She doesn't say it, but they're all thinking the same thing. It's been too long since someone died.

"We're not that outnumbered," Fry says suddenly. "It's only three against four. We could -"

"No." Leela cuts him off. "We can't take the Careers. One of us can't fight" - she indicates herself - "and two of us don't want to. It'd be suicide."

Silence falls.

"I'm gonna take a walk," Jrr says. "Maybe there's a source of fresh water we haven't thought of. It can't hurt to look, right?"

"Maybe someone will send us some," Fry says.

Oh. _Sponsors_. It hits her like a thunderbolt. Sponsors would send them water, but only if they get something in return. Jrr is smarter than Fry – he's probably figured that out already. His decision to look for water is most likely just an excuse to leave the two of them alone.

Leela swallows. Whatever humor they found in this situation earlier has just evaporated. She will have to kiss Fry now, escalate things with him somehow.

How? How do people do this?

Fry is staring out the window, watching Jrr slosh down the street.

"It's happening, isn't it?" he says quietly. "It's ending."

"Are you scared?"

Leela doesn't know what makes her ask. He just looks so distant.

Fry frowns.

"I don't know. I was. I wanted it to all be over. But now you're here and . . . and I don't want it to end. Not yet."

"I know what you mean," Leela says. "The more I think about dying, the more I think about . . . about all the things I'll never get the chance to do. Things I never thought were important before."

She is reaching here, but she can't think of a more natural way to plant the idea in his head.

"Like what?" Fry asks.

"Don't laugh."

"I won't."

"Okay. Well . . . I've never . . . I've never kissed anyone."

Her face flames at the admission. _No acting required_, she thinks bitterly. It hurts that the surface can rob this milestone from her, take it on their terms the way they want to take her life.

Fry laughs.

"Fry!"

He stops.

"Oh, right, sorry. I said I wouldn't laugh. I just . . . I mean, it's only kissing, Leela. It's not _that_ great."

Leela flinches. This isn't how she expected this to go.

"How would you know?" she demands.

She can't keep the edge out of her voice. For some reason it never occurred to her that Fry might have any more experience in the world of kissing than she did. Maybe because he's so skinny and red-headed and, well, awkward.

He shrugs, oblivious.

"I've kissed lots of people," he tells her, offhandedly. "The girls in the orphanarium used to practice on me."

"What girls?"

"Eh. Colleen, Michelle . . . Colleen just made out with everybody, and Michelle used to say I was cute but she'd deny it if anyone asked her. She only wanted to be a good kisser for when Adlai Atkins asked her out one day." He rolls his eyes. "Oh, and there was that time the lights cut out and Randy kissed me, but he _says_ he thought I was Colleen. And I guess there was the Xmas party last year, when Warden Proctor got drunk and kinda just attacked me with her mouth. That was weird."

Leela is staring. She thinks suddenly of her parents – of how happy they used to look when they kissed.

"That sounds awful," she says before she can stop herself. "Didn't anybody ever kiss you for you?"

"What do you mean, for me?" Fry seems bewildered by the question. "You mean like a present? Um . . . Warden Proctor said I was a dirty boy and I was getting what I deserved. Before she tried to bite my tongue off. Does that count?"

Leela shudders. It seems Warden Proctor's cruel, repressed veneer concealed an unguessed-at level of crazy.

"No, it absolutely doesn't. I mean, didn't anyone ever kiss you because they liked you? Because . . . because you were kind, or funny. Or because you made them feel . . ."

Why is she so tongue-tied?

Fry seems to get it anyway. He looks troubled.

"No," he mumbles. "No-one ever did that."

"Oh."

Leela swallows. She feels like her heart is fluttering in her stomach.

She leans in.

"Fry?"

"Yeah?"

He looks miserable, a world away.

"I'm going to."

His eyes widen, startled, and then Leela presses her lips to his. It's a light touch, and her cheeks are already burning with embarrassment when she pulls back.

Fry stares at her. His mouth is a little bit open.

And then he kisses her back.

His mouth is warm and wet. He has one arm around her waist, pulling her in. His other hand is in her hair. His thumb brushes her cheek, her neck, the shell of her ear.

Leela can't think. She feels like a part of her is melting. She doesn't know what the hell she's doing, but it doesn't seem to matter. She never wants this to end. Every time one of them needs air they break contact for a second, gasp in a breath, and find the other's mouth again. She doesn't know if it's all one long kiss, or a series of smaller ones. She doesn't care.

When they break apart she feels like the world is shifting beneath her feet. Fry looks dazed.

"I think I was wrong," he says hoarsely. "Kissing _is_ a big deal."

And then Jrr screams out in the street.


	7. Chapter 7

The rain is coming down heavier than ever. Driving. Blinding. Leela shakes her bangs out of her eye, grimacing as salt water slops into her open mouth.

Fry is yelling, frantic.

"Jrr! _Jrr!_"

The water has risen to waist-level. The flood is coming faster now. _Gamemakers, _Leela thinks bitterly.

"Jrr!" she shouts.

Fry stumbles, almost goes under. Leela has to hoick him up by his collar. He grips her arm tightly, white-faced and disoriented as the current sucks at his skinny body.

"Leela," he chokes. "Leela, I can't swim."

_Damn, _Leela thinks. Of course he can't swim. He didn't grow up in the sewer, and it's not like that orphanarium had a pool.

"Keep a hold of me," she tells him. "I'll keep you afloat."

She grips his shoulder tightly, her injured arm thrown out for balance. It hurts, but it's better than going under. Fry fumbles for handholds – walls, garbage cans, brickwork – and the two of them push on down the street. There is no possible way to conceal their approach. Every step results in ripples ten feet ahead of them. Fry has the laser gun tucked inside his jacket, but other than that they are completely unarmed.

Jrr is two blocks away, trapped under a weighted net. He is gurgling, screaming as the water floods his mouth and nose. Every time he tries to stand the weights around his neck drag him down again. The harder he tries to free himself, the more entangled he becomes.

Leela tears the net away and Fry grabs Jrr's arm, hauling the stocky Omicronian to his feet.

"What happened?"

Jrr gapes at them.

"The Careers!" he gulps out. "They got me, they're coming! You have to get out of here! Leela, you promised!"

Leela barely has time to open her mouth, to tell him that Fry is safe, it was just a trap . . . when she realizes it _was_ just a trap. The aim was to drown Jrr and draw out his allies, and like a fool, she walked right into it.

Just as she has this thought, the Carcaron girl shoots up from under the water.

Of course. Her species is closest to Earth's sharks. All her senses have evolved to function best under water. The salt flood must be a dream come true for her – her natural habitat replicated for her in the arena.

Her head snaps back and forth. Water sluices out of her gills. And then she lunges at Jrr.

He must be dizzy from his near-drowning, because his reactions are slow. He loses his balance, goes down again, and with the weight of the Carcaron girl on top of him, he's not getting up easy. They wrestle, partway under the water.

Something sharp whizzes past Leela's ear. Blood streaks across her cheek as she turns her head to catch sight of it, but it's too fast. It's already gone.

Another whizzing sound, and this time she sees it – an evil bronze throwing star, stuck in the wall behind her. She follows its trajectory and realizes it came from the hulking green shape on the balcony opposite. Brett the blob. The stocky Neptunian boy appears at his shoulder, a machete glinting cruelly in his hand.

_Careers never hunt alone_, she snaps at herself. She was an idiot to forget it.

"Fry, get down!" she shrieks. He is still standing beside her, frozen in fear.

Wait, no. He's not. He's frozen in shock. As Leela watches he puts a hand up to his shoulder. Bright red blood comes away on his fingers.

That first throwing star found a mark after all. It's half-buried under Fry's collarbone.

His forehead creases in confusion.

"It's stuck," he says dumbly. Before Leela can stop him, he reaches up and yanks it free.

Blood pours out. It sprays Leela's face, turns the water around them swirling crimson. Up on the balcony the Careers are laughing. They must have learned from their earlier mistakes at the bloodbath. They intend to drag these deaths out, give the Gamemakers a show and increase their own chances of going home.

Fry starts to shake. The blood is still surging out of him. All Leela can do is say his name, over and over.

"Fry! No . . . _Fry!_"

She feels broken.

The color is starting to drain from Fry's face. He fumbles in his jacket, searching for the gun, and . . .

The gun.

Leela stares at it. At Fry's shaking hands as he tries to pass it her.

With her good hand, she sets the charge. Her fingers curl around the trigger. Brett scarcely has time to register the weapon before Leela fires a violet ray at him. It's a loose, poorly-aimed shot, but it hits his slimy underside, searing a smoking line into the vivid green flesh. Brett hops instinctively away from the pain and loses his footing. He topples from the shelter of the balcony into the churning brine below.

His scream is agonizing. Too extreme for simple salt water, Leela thinks. But salt water seems to work like acid on his alien body. He screams and writhes, shriveling up before their eyes as great streaks of green are sucked out of him. _Osmosis, _she thinks dully. She remembers the word from chemistry class.

_Boom_. The cannon sounds.

The Neptunian boy disappears from view. Whether he intends to flee the scene or join the fray Leela doesn't know. It doesn't seem to matter anyway, because Fry's blood is still spilling into the water, and she can barely hold him up.

From somewhere behind her comes a terrifying, inhuman roar.

She turns slowly.

Jrr is rising from the crimson water. He has the Carcaron girl in his hands. His eyes are wide, mad, the pupils contracted to tiny pinpricks.

He roars again, shaking the girl like a rag doll . . . and then he rips her throat out. Her blood gushes into his open mouth and he swallows it eagerly. His limbs are shaking now, nostrils flaring wide. He bellows out an inarticulate war cry, and tears apart the corpse in his hands.

_Boom. _

Jrr sniffs. The smell of blood settles deep in his lungs. He reaches over his shoulder, grasps his fleem and spins around. The Neptunian boy is creeping up on him, machete raised to strike, but he doesn't stand a chance. The metal teeth of the fleem grip his neck, Jrr pulls the handle upwards, and the boy's head flies off.

_Boom._

Leela wants to be sick. Fry is shuddering violently.

"Jrr," he whispers.

Jrr's attention snaps to him. The Omnicronian stalks over to them. His eyes are still bright. Crazy. When he looks at them, there is no hint of recognition on his face. Something does flash there - confusion, maybe? Leela isn't sure and she can't waste time wondering, because he has dropped the fleem and is reaching for Fry. He touches the boy's face. Runs his hands through his hair. Tastes the blood . . .

He opens his mouth wide.

"Jrr, no!" Fry yells.

Leela doesn't have time to think. She picks up the fleem, throws all her weight behind it . . . and drives it through the roof of Jrr's mouth.

Gray matter spatters the wall. Blood runs down her arms.

Fry screams, Jrr grunts, and together the three of them fall.

The cannon sounds.

* * *

><p>The water rushes in her eardrums, and every panicked beat of her heart sounds like the cannon going off again.<p>

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

_You did that, _a voice whispers in her head. _You killed Jrr. _

Leela surfaces, gasping. She can't think about that yet.

Fry is still screaming when she pulls him up. He thrashes wildly, fighting her with all his feeble strength.

"Fry, it's me! It's Leela! I'm not going to hurt you!"

It's no use. Fry's eyes are wide and unfocused. Every muscle in his skinny body is tensed tight, and he won't stop screaming. He's hysterical, Leela realizes. Gone off the deep end. Suddenly she remembers herself at ten, screaming when she heard of the pipeway collapse. She wonders if she looked anything like this then. Gone, empty, absent from her own head.

It's an unsettling thought.

Fry can't hurt her – he doesn't have the strength – but it's hard to keep a hold of him when he won't stay still, and Leela is worried about the trouble his screams might bring down on them. Celgnar and Mrrxxss are still out there, and the Amphisobian girl. Right now they'd be easy pickings for any of them.

Blood is still pouring from Fry's shoulder. They are standing in a red river that stretches half the length of the street. How much of the blood belongs to Fry is hard to say, but the flow from his shoulder is steady and persistent, and his face is deathly white. He has clearly lost more than he can afford.

Leela slings her injured arm around Fry's neck and slaps him hard with her good hand. It's brutal, but it works to snap him out of it. He stops screaming and gulps for air like a stunned fish.

"We have to move," Leela tells him. "We're not safe here."

Recognition dawns on Fry slowly.

"Leela?"

"Yeah, Leela. C'mon."

"Are you going to hurt me?"

"Why would I hurt you?"

"Why wouldn't you?"

Leela frowns. In a way, he's right. Fry is pretty much done for. She could leave him right now and he would bleed to death in an hour. Maybe less if he passes out and slips beneath the water. The Career pack is mostly out of the running. There's a chance Leela could take the remaining three tributes with a little help from her sponsors. Now that she's a killer, she could ditch the love angle and step into the vacated shoes of the Careers.

But to do it she would have to leave Fry, and for some reason she can't do that. She can't spend tonight alone in the cold, waiting for the boom of the cannon. Knowing that the next time she sees his face it will be projected onto the sky in eulogy. If she walks away now she will spend the rest of her life stuck in this moment, hating herself.

"I told you," she says numbly. "I'm trying to keep you alive."

"Why?"

The answer is complicated. _Because you saved my mother,_ Leela thinks. _Because you treated me like a person. Because I kissed you and it meant something I can't explain. _

_Because you're waking me up, and it scares the hell out of me. _

But she can't say any of this in front of the cameras. His interview got Fry in enough trouble. Talking about how he broke the rules and offered friendship to a trespassing mutant would only make it worse. Mentioning the jealousy she felt when he told the truth about Nixon's regime would kill their sponsor support stone dead, and telling the world he makes her think seditious thoughts would probably get them both murdered.

So she does the only thing she knows the Gamemakers won't interpret as treason. She leans in and kisses him hard on the mouth.

He tastes like salt. At first Leela thinks it's the water, but when she pulls away she can see the tear tracks on his face. She doesn't know why he's crying. Maybe it's pain. Maybe it's grief. Maybe he no longer trusts her reasons for kissing him. She doesn't dare ask.

"We need to move," she says instead.

Fry nods.

"Okay," he whispers.

Leela peels off her sweater, wads it up, and presses it against the wound on his shoulder. The pressure stems some of the bleeding. Fry keeps the makeshift compress in place with his opposite hand, and Leela wraps her good arm around his waist to hold him up. They make slow progress like this, but for once the Gamemakers seem to be on their side. The flood waters are already starting to recede. By the time they reach the ruined city center, the streets are wet but passable, and the rain has stopped.

Fry is in a bad way. Between blood loss and sheer exhaustion he can barely stay upright. His grip on the compress keeps going slack, and he sways even without the current sucking at his legs.

Leela drags them into one of the high rises. The ground floor is slimy and reeking after the flood, and she doesn't trust the Gamemakers not to send another one, so they make camp on the third floor. Their clothes are sticking to them and the cold is making Leela's teeth chatter, so she gathers up all the furniture she can find and sets a fire in the center of the room. Fry protests but she waves him down.

"We can't afford to get sick," she tells him.

"B-but . . . the others," Fry says weakly. "They'll see."

"Maybe," Leela concedes. "I don't think they'll come though. Mrrxxss is the only Career left, remember? She can't guard everything at the Cornucopia by herself. I bet one of the others will try to take her tonight, before she figures out the rest of the Pack is dead. Celgnar, probably. Martians aren't built for the cold, and I don't think he was getting any sponsors. He'll be tempted for sure."

"What about the g-g-girl?"

Fry is shivering. He drags himself closer to the fire, steam curling from his clothes.

Leela shrugs.

"She'll be careful, I think. She seems crafty. If she wasn't anywhere near when . . . when everything happened today, then she probably just heard a bunch of cannons go off. She won't know who's dead yet, or what happened. She might even think the Gamemakers set something off. That would be good. She won't want to come too close."

"Is – is that it?" Fry asks. "J-just the f-five of us?"

"Yeah."

Leela loads some more rotting planks onto the fire. They sputter fitfully.

"M-maybe we should split up," Fry stutters.

Leela stares at him.

"What? Why the hell would we do that?" The suggestion makes her angry somehow. "I already told you, I'm not going to hurt you. Jrr was – Jrr -" Her voice keeps catching on his name. Sweet, softhearted Jrr. His blood is still crusted over her jacket. _You promised, _she reminds herself. "He attacked you," she tells Fry. "I did what I had to do."

Fry shakes his head.

"Tha's not what I meant," he mumbles. His words are starting to slur. "'s the Games, remember? 'S all ending. An' then . . . you know. What happens."

He seems to be having difficulty staying awake.

Leela frowns.

"Fry?" She shakes him by the shoulder. "Fry, wake up. You can't go to sleep."

"Mmnhmm . . ."

"Fry!"

She hates herself for slapping him again – he's beat up enough by now – but she can't think what else to do. The thought of him falling asleep in this condition fills her with terror.

Uncertain what else to do, she drags him as close to the fire as she can get without turning him into human kindling. The heat sears her face, but it barely seems to touch Fry. He remains as pale as before. His eyes keep drifting shut.

In desperation, Leela unzips his jacket and crawls inside, pressing her body against every inch of him she can reach. She knows it's bad when he doesn't even react.

"Stay awake," she growls. "We'll get something soon. From sponsors. You have to hold on until then."

"But . . . ending . . . the Games . . . we . . ."

"We're not splitting up," Leela snaps. "End of discussion."

There is a long silence. She huffs on Fry's cold hands. Tries to rub some life into them.

"Talk to me," she orders. "Tell me something."

"Like . . . like . . . what?"

"Anything."

"Well . . . I always wanted to go to space."

It's an unexpected confession.

Leela snorts.

"I thought the whole reason you were doing this was so you wouldn't have to go to space."

She doesn't mention Halley's Comet by name. She feels like using the words would be bad luck somehow, even though they're already out there and sponsors surely can't forget them.

Fry catches her meaning anyway.

"Not like that," he argues. "That's not real space. That's just . . . a prison. I mean . . . I mean exploring. New worlds and aliens and rocket ships, forever and ever and ever. That's what I used to dream about, when I was a kid."

"In your time?"

"Always, I guess."

He's warming up, Leela notes with relief. He no longer sounds like a drunk slurring his words, and he winces when she puts pressure on his wound. It's a good sign.

"Where would you go?"

Fry considers the question. The look in his eyes is one Leela has never seen before. Far-off. Dreamy.

"The Moon," he says. "To see the site of the moon landing, and . . . oh, Neil Armstrong's bootprint. And the Keeler crater on Mars. And the Venusian Gardens, and the Ice Fields of Hyperion. And Pluto, even though everyone says it's not a planet anymore . . ."

"It's not? What is it then?"

"I dunno. A big rock, I guess."

"Who lives there?"

"Um . . . penguins. It's a penguin reserve."

"_Penguins?_"

"Yeah, but I still wanna go. It's Pluto! It's cool."

"I think you mean _cold_."

"You're laughing at me, aren't you? I can't see your face but I _know_ you're laughing at me."

Leela bites down hard on her smile.

"No! It sounds adorable. Penguins on Pluto. Fluffy, flappy, fat little baby penguins. It's the cutest thing I've ever heard."

Fry groans.

"I'm never gonna live this down, am I?"

An awful silence falls.

"You're not -"

"I didn't mean -"

They both shut up then because really, what's the point? Fry was right earlier – this is the Games. They only ever end one way.

The soft chime of a parachute alert breaks the silence, and Leela scrambles up to get it. If there is a lump in her throat, she pretends it doesn't exist.

* * *

><p>The parachute haul is a good one. There is clean water, a hot stew with real meat in it, and another heat-reflecting blanket to keep out the cold. Fry gets bandages for his shoulder wound, and more of the antiseptic cream that stopped him bleeding before. Leela gets a blue jello tube that locks around her injured wrist and pulses steadily every sixty seconds. It makes her ache, but it's healing the broken bone. This gift comes accompanied by a shiny new hunting knife. The message couldn't be clearer: sponsors like Crazed Killer Leela.<p>

She touches the sharp tip of the blade, turns the knife over in her hand.

Behind her eye she can see Jrr's blank gaze, feel the resistance as she pushed the fleem into his skull. She can see him rolling around on the floor that same morning, laughing at her and Fry. Teasing them for conserving body heat. Telling her he didn't want to be a killer. She thinks of herself - teasing Fry with him, feeling sorry for him. Making him a promise she didn't even think about until he was already dead.

She feels sick.

All of it – everything they got tonight – was bought at a cost she can hardly stand. If it weren't for Fry she would toss it all out the window. But the other tributes are still out there and she can't afford to look ungrateful when her sponsors have sent her such a wonderful gift. So she smiles woodenly in the direction she guesses a camera must lie, and feigns excitement when she shows the knife off to Fry.

She's in the running again, isn't it great?

Bile is twisting her up from the inside out.

* * *

><p>That night Leela takes watch. Fry tries to argue, but she successfully wears him down. He's too weak, he can't be trusted to stay awake. Besides, he could use the rest. The supplies from the parachute have helped, but Leela is under no illusions. Nothing in the arena can replace the blood Fry has already lost. For all she knows, he could be bleeding internally as well. The cream they were sent only works on surface injuries, after all. His leg was pretty mangled the first time she saw it, and that throwing-star cut deep. If the Games don't end soon . . .<p>

She glances over at him.

He is sleeping beside the fire, which is still going strong, and Leela has put the foil blanket over him. His breathing is shallow.

Leela herself has taken up position by the window, wearing both their jackets to guard against the chill. The cold air blows in through the broken window and makes her cheeks sting. Her discomfort is deliberate – calculated to keep her awake as long as possible – but it's still miserable.

Mrrxxss is building a bonfire by the Cornucopia. She must assume most, if not all, of the Career pack survived the day. Maybe she thinks they were delayed by some trick of the Gamemakers'. Either way, she is busy readying the camp for their return; checking on the stash and gathering wood for a fire she won't need to light until the mammals in the group show up.

Celgnar is hiding in the cover of the trees. His spear glints in the moonlight.

The Gamemakers have arranged a crisp, clear night, perfect for an ambush. After the action-movie drama of the flooded street, they seem to be going for a film noir feel. This kill will be dramatically backlit, an interplay of gold and black set before the gleaming Cornucopia. Hopefully Celgnar and Mrrxxss will provide a suitably cinematic battle. If the effect goes to waste the Gamemakers will be pissed, and Leela has no desire to be on the receiving end of their revenge.

The anthem plays. The faces of the fallen flash in the sky.

Leela stares at her lap so she won't have to see them. She polishes her knife on the bottom of her jacket, and lets her mind wander.

She wants to be somewhere different. Somewhere happy. She thinks of her father, of the way he used to make her stand on his feet and hold his hands, so he could waltz her around the kitchen. It's a nice memory.

Below her, Celgnar and Mrrxxss are waltzing with weapons. They parry each other's blows with a surprising grace. The audience must be enjoying this one, Leela thinks dully.

She tries to retreat into another memory. It doesn't work. Everything she comes up with is twisted and reshaped to reflect her current reality. The muted gleam of her tin can xylophone becomes the shining Cornucopia. Fishing on the mutant lake becomes drowning in the flooded street. Her mother's smile becomes an anguished scream as the Peacekeepers pull her away, and the warmth of Fry's mouth turns into the heat of a raging fever.

She bites down on her knuckle, and fights a growing urge to scream.


End file.
